Goodbye Again (9 page)

SEVEN

We were running now, with the painting. Crossing the Pont Neuf, I noticed a youth skating along on roller blades behind us. He seemed to be following us. And he was, still behind us as we came into the Marais quarter. When we reached Harry’s square, Ben stopped. A police car was parked in front of Harry’s house.

‘Christ, that archivist must have told the cops about my being a friend of Harry’s. No future there. Let’s go. The boat.’ We left the square, taking a new direction, through narrow streets we hadn’t been in before, turning left, then right, then stopping. We were lost. ‘It must be that way.’

We turned, walked down an empty, dusty street, the sun casting harsh shadows across old, boarded-up apartment buildings to either side. Then footsteps behind us, two men, the younger one who had been on the boat with me an hour before in baggy
tracksuit
bottoms, the other in slacks and dark glasses. We started to run, but there was nowhere to run to. A cul-de-sac. The side wall of another apartment building blocked the end of the street, the doors of all the other buildings on both sides firmly boarded up.

But there was another smaller door, further on. No boards across it. Ben threw himself against it. It gave way with a crash, and I was right after him, running fast, along a dark corridor, up some stone steps, through a swing door and into a big open space, a marble-tiled hall, lit by high windows, sunlight streaming down on two empty bathing pools. To either side a score of cubicles, partitioned and fronted by white curtains. We’d made a full circle round the pools. We were in the old Turkish baths, only recently closed, for there were still dirty towels strewn about the floor.

Running round the end of the pools we ran into a cubicle halfway along on the far side, drawing the curtain behind us. Inside was a slatted wooden massage table.

‘Up! Up on the table.’ Ben clambered up and I followed him, crouching on all fours. I saw why now. All the curtains fell an inch or two short of the tiled floor, so that anyone taking a worm’s-eye view along the row of cubicles would see our feet.

We waited. Running footsteps, up the stone stairway. The men were in the building. Silence. Footsteps starting again, softly now, but going in different directions, on the far side of the pool, to both ends of the other row of cubicles. The violent swish of curtains then, every few seconds, the men moving down the row in a pincer movement, hoping to trap us in the middle.

We had to get down the far end of the line, while we had the chance, towards the back door and make a run for it.

Easing ourselves off the table, we ran through the partition curtain into the next cubicle, hitting the massage table, and then into the cubicle beyond. By then they’d heard the racket and were running over towards us, one to either end of the line, blocking off our escape.

We got up on a massage table again. Trapped, waiting for them, helpless. There was a broom against the wall of the cubicle. Ben picked it up, then gestured to me. We both stood up on the table,
but right against the wall this time, Ben holding the broom.

The footsteps starting again, softly in the silence, coming towards us from either side. Ben held the broom out, against the partition curtain to our left. The repeated swish of curtains as both men converged on us. Three cubicles away, two, one. Ben stabbed at the curtain viciously with his broom.

The shots rang out, bullets tearing through the curtain on our left, through the other to our right. We heard the second man fall heavily in the cubicle to our right. We ran fast, over the body, in a flurry of curtains, through all the other cubicles, towards the back door, ending up in the last cubicle. This was a larger one, without a massage table. There were cupboards, lockers, old towels, sponges littered about, and a fire hydrant against the end wall. A big canvas hose, flattened and coiled on a drum with a wheel tap above it.

Ben spun the tap. A vague hiss of water. Then, with another turn there was full pressure. He pulled the hose out, hand over hand, the drum spinning furiously, the canvas swelling, writhing about in his hands now, before a great jet of water emerged from the metal nozzle. He let it rip into the curtains ahead of us, tearing some of them clean off their rails.

The other man was still out of sight somewhere behind us along the row of cubicles, hidden by the sheets. Ben moved forward, hosing one sheet after another in a fierce torrent of water. Suddenly the man was in front of Ben, but only his shape, the drenched white curtain pressed against his body like a mould. He started to shoot again, wildly, through the material.

The curtain flew off its rails, enveloping him like a shroud. He stumbled out into the hall, struggling to free himself. It was easy for Ben: he directed the full force of water at the man’s chest. He fell back like a ten-pin into one of the empty pools, six feet to the tiled bottom, a motionless heap, wrapped up in a sheet like a load of old laundry.

Ben climbed down, took the shroud off him and turned him over. I saw the soaking baggy tracksuit bottoms, the matchstick legs. He was unconscious. Ben went through his pockets. Nothing, no labels on his clothes. Nothing to identify him.

Then the other older man, lying in the cubicle. He looked dead. Ben went through his pockets – nothing to identify him. He picked up his gun, pocketed it, went back for the Modi nude where he’d left it on the locker, then looked at the fire hydrant. The hose was still spurting full tilt into the pool. ‘Let it run. It’ll either drown him or wake him.’

‘No, we’re not killers. Turn it off.’ He didn’t. ‘We don’t have time,’ he said. Then we were out the back door and running. ‘The boat!’ he shouted. ‘The boat!’

We got to the Port de Plaisance, crossing the footbridge over the basin, moving towards the
Sorrento
moored halfway along on the other side. We could see it now, a hundred yards away. Ben stopped. ‘Wait a moment.’ There was a man up by a pay phone beyond the bridge, seemingly waiting to use it, but there was no one using it. ‘A look-out,’ Ben murmured. ‘I bet there’s someone waiting to nab us on the boat. The police. That archivist must have told them about the
Sorrento
.’ We were still walking towards the boat. ‘Just turn round and walk back over the bridge – easily, slowly.’ We did. Then we heard the footsteps behind us again. We ran.

We crossed the bridge and ran down onto the other quay, losing ourselves among the crowd of tourists and afternoon strollers. Further down there were two big steel refuse skips set above the moored boats. We hid behind them, waiting, breathless. The running footsteps came towards us, paused, then passed us on the other side.

Just behind us, low down in the water, wedged between two smart yachts, we saw an old converted barge,
L’Etoile,
with a line of washing and two bicycles on the deck, and a sign above the wheelhouse:
Bateau à Louer.

Ben went straight down the gangway. I had to follow. He looked into the wheelhouse. No one there. He hammered on the door.

‘Christ! Hold your horses, whoever you are.’ A man shouted in English, rising up from the hold as if from a stage trap door. A big man, seemingly more wide than tall, rings of fat, middle-aged, white-haired, a stormy beard, deeply lined face, like a crumpled boarding house bed. A Falstaff in grimy shorts and a T-shirt. He’d hardly opened the door before Ben spoke, pushing into the wheelhouse.

‘Hi! Saw your sign. We’re interested in renting your boat.’

‘Come on, come on in then.’

We were in the wheelhouse, hidden from the quay. The place was a mess. Books, papers, dirty mugs and bottles all over the place. I could smell the man’s aniseed breath. The bottle was nearby, a litre of Ricard. Two drunks now, I thought. Just dandy.

‘A drink?’ He picked up the bottle. He might have been expecting us.

‘Thanks, but it’s a bit early for me. Sun’s not yet over the yard arm.’

‘Oh – a sailing man yourself?’

‘Yes, out of Poole harbour. We have a racing five metre. Over in Paris on a break and saw the sign, thought we might hire the boat and take it up one of the canals here.’

‘Yes, why not? You have RYA helmsman’s papers? Need that over here.’

‘Oh, yes, I have all the papers. What do you charge?’

‘Hundred quid a day. I’ll give you 20 per cent off, if you take it for a week. Sleeps eight, most mod cons, and you get the theatre thrown in.’

‘The theatre? What sort of …’

‘All sorts. Straight, farce, commedia dell’arte, cabaret, old-time music hall, conjuring, illusionist’s tricks, and potted Shakespeare:
bilingual, French and English. On the deck in summer, below deck in the hold in winter. We cruise the canals, moor in towns and villages. “Les Saltimbanques de Bateau” we’re called. We’re having a break for a week or so, and I need to get back to London for a bit. But any income we can get meanwhile…’

‘Of course.’

The man was enthusiastic now. ‘Take a look below.’ He turned back. ‘I’m Geoff, by the way. Geoff Wakefield.’ Ben took his hand. ‘George Hayward,’ he said at once. ‘This is my friend Isobel.’ I shook his hand. More than a hand. It was a huge paw, to go with the huge everything else.

We were coming down the steps to the hold, into a narrow central corridor. There was quite a decent-sized galley to the right, bottled gas cooker, fridge, dirty sink, plates and wine glasses. Further on he opened a cabin door. ‘The master bedroom,
bathroom
en suite.’ We looked inside. Chaos again. ‘I’m sorry – haven’t done it over yet.’ No bunks, but a double divan filled nearly all the space, with a headboard, gilded plaster cupids playing at the top. Two portholes, hundreds of dead flies and a pot of brown
geraniums
on a shelf beneath.

‘Great,’ Ben said.

‘I’m sorry – no chairs. No room.’

‘Doesn’t matter. We can just sit on the bed.’

‘There’s a shower here.’ He pulled a curtain across on the far side. ‘Have to be a bit careful with the water, but you’ll always get a minute or so out of it – warm water, I mean.’

‘We … I don’t shower much.’

Geoff swayed as we left the cabin. We moved into a long, narrow space, the covered hold of the old barge, wooden benches piled up on each side, a small proscenium arch at the end, curtained and crowned by two more gilded cupids.

‘A lot of cupids,’ Ben said.

‘Yes, from a movie studio clear out here, a job lot.’

‘Glut on the market these days I expect, gilded cupids,’ Ben murmured. Then he was enthusiastic. ‘“The smell of the greasepaint, roar of the crowd”!’

‘Interested in theatre?’

‘Oh, yes, used to act a bit.’ Ben had gone forward, peeking through the curtain. ‘May I?’ Geoff nodded. Ben got up on the small stage, disappeared and then returned. He was wearing a shiny top hat, holding a silver topped cane. He did a little dance, swinging the cane, doffing the hat. He laughed. I didn’t.

‘Great!’ Geoff shouted up. ‘That’s part of my ‘The Man who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo’ act.’

Ben immediately started on the song, in an off-key voice. ‘“As I walk along the Bois Boolong, with an independent air, you can hear the girls declare, he must be a millionaire … He’s the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo!”’

Geoff clapped vigorously. ‘A bit of make-up and my dress suit and you’d be perfect.’

Ben jumped down from the stage and shook hands with Geoff. ‘Great! We’ll take it.’

‘But Ben … George …’

Ben turned, looked at me fiercely. ‘Yes, a bit of make-up and a dress suit. Wouldn’t recognize me, would you,
Isobel
?’

‘No. No, I wouldn’t.’ I saw what he had in mind. Disguises. He was mad.

‘We’ll take the boat, for a week.’

We went back up into the wheelhouse. ‘I’ll take that drink now.’ George poured Ben a large Ricard, with just a splash of water, then offered me the bottle. I shook my head. He added a little water to his own glass. They toasted each other. Ben took out his wallet and counted out £550 in crisp £50 notes. They toasted each other again. Ben handed him the money.

They drank again and talked of the trip. ‘Where would you like to go?’ Geoff had some maps by the wheel, the canals of France. Ben turned to me. ‘Where would you like to go, darling?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘The Marne and Rhine canal might suit you,’ Geoff put in quickly. He opened up a plan of it, in a tall, narrow book, with the route detailed on each page. ‘Goes east through some fine country, and some good pike fishing if you wanted it. There’s two rods in the stern locker. A week’s trip – to Bar-le-Duc – here.’ He pointed a finger. ‘There’s a little restaurant just off the square, Le Coq d’Or. Tell you what: would you leave the boat at Bar-le-Duc for me, and give the keys to the patron of Le Coq d’Or? Monsieur Jacques is an old friend. I said he could have the barge for a family holiday, until I get back.’

Ben took another gulp of Ricard and looked at the map. ‘Fine. We don’t want to come back the same way anyway. We’ll leave the boat at Bar-le-Duc, and take a train back from there. Can we leave today? Now?’

‘Sure. Just sign a few papers. What about your luggage?’