Jacquot and the Waterman (21 page)

But it was a different world down there now, along La
Joliette, from when Jacquot was a boy, loitering along
those streets with Doisneau and his pals. Now it was
cranes and hard hats, the rattle of jackhammers, bulldozers and Metro extensions, and a recently completed and
widely acclaimed office conversion, the old warehouses set
against the Littoral flyover transformed into chic and
elegant office space - six-floor atriums, glass-walled lifts,
glades of giant fern and pools of golden carp among the
teak decking and gravelled Japanese landscapes.

Nowadays the tattoo parlour nearest to La Joliette was
tucked away in a courtyard behind Republique, and it was
here that Jacquot was headed. Tuesday morning. First
thing, just as Gastal had suggested. On foot. Feeling a little
weak and ragged from Gassi's
demis
the night before but
every sense alert.

This, Jacquot decided, shading his eyes as he stepped
out from Le Panier's shadowy side streets onto the sun-
warmed quay of the Vieux Port, was what it was all about,
everything he loved about police work. Real police work.
Down in the trenches. A photo in your pocket and a whole
city to trawl, people to seek out, questions to ask, leads to
follow.

Of course, Guimpier wouldn't have approved. As chief
investigating officer it wasn't the kind of police work
Jacquot should have bothered with, a job more usefully
delegated to one of his team - that bloodhound Peluze, or
the wily, devious new girl Isabelle Cassier, or Chevin with
his disarming stutter, or Laganne, Serre, Muzon. Any of
them on the homicide squad could have done the job. But
Jacquot couldn't resist it. Out here in the morning sunshine, following a hunch, with only the flimsiest evidence
to work on; knowing that somewhere in the city there was
an answer to every question, a solution for every crime, a
killer for every victim. You just had to look. Like the old
times. Read the passage of play, keep your eyes and ears
open, and take your opportunities where you found them.

It wasn't so different from the time he'd spent with
Doisneau and the
Chats de Nuit,
young kids, out on the
street, looking for mischief. Only this time Jacquot was on
the right side of the law, with a badge in his pocket to
prove it and twenty years' service under his belt. From a
gendarme walking suburban beats to hunting down killers
for Homicide, he'd played his part in countless dramas.
But the thrill of the chase never palled. It was what
Jacquot loved, and never tired of. Maybe something,
maybe nothing, but always worth the ante.

And what a place to do it, he thought, breathing in a
lungful of salty sea air along the Quai du Port, and the very
next moment, as he turned the Samaritaine corner into
Republique, catching a warm, rotting whiff of drains.
Marseilles. The city he'd grown up in, left and come back
to. A city by the sea. Wherever you went - in its darkest
alleyways, its busiest markets, in its parks and suburbs,
along its most fashionable thoroughfares - the ocean was
always there. The watery play of its reflection when you
least expected it, a slice of blue at the end of a boulevard,
or a flash of distant sun-glitter between buildings. And
always the clean, salty scent of it sluicing through the city
streets.

And this morning he was a part of that city, as close as
you could get, the pavement under his feet, the sun on his
shoulders, a cool breeze licking at his neck. And on his
own, the way he liked it. The way Rully had always fallen
in with, understood; the reason they got on so well
together. Following his nose, letting instinct rather than
procedure set the pace, point the way.

Instinct. Jacquot knew it was his strongest card. Growing up in the back alleys of Le Panier, playing fast and
loose with the
Chats,
instinct had been his key to survival.
Knowing who to trust and knowing when to run. And
instinct too, knowing, when the moment arrived, to follow
an old man with white hair and his mother's gentle eyes
who came to claim him from the Borel orphanage. A man
he'd never met, didn't know. His mothers father.

It was the same instinct that served him from the
moment he stepped onto the field of play, encouraged by
that same old man; knowing somehow where the ball
would go next, knowing which of his opponents was the
real threat, knowing which of his own team-mates to
shadow. Sensing the passage of play.

Instinct. And Jacquot could feel its gentle, goading
presence now, as he sought out his first port of call, in a
sloping, rubbish-strewn yard a few steps back from the
traffic on Republique. There was no shop window, just a
door with an unlit neon sign above it,
Tattoo-Toi,
and three
stone steps leading down into a dim semi-basement parlour that smelt of damp plaster, old sweat and spilled
antiseptic. In the middle of the room was a barbers chair
surrounded by the paraphernalia of tattooing: needle gun,
inks, a tray of plastic bottles, an unlikely-looking bag of
pink cotton wool balls and, beneath the chair, a patch of
bubbled lino stained with blots of ink - red, blue, black,
green - and scarred with a worn furrow where, Jacquot
supposed, the soles of customers' shoes rasped as the
needle bit.

'Allo.
Anyone around?' called Jacquot.

With a swish and slap, a curtain of beads at the back of
the room parted and the proprietor appeared, his grubby
sleeveless .vest revealing bulging tattooed shoulders under
a mat of black hair. Holding the beads to one side, he gave
Jacquot a surly once-over before bringing up his other
hand and biting into the brioche he was carrying.

At which point, saying nothing in return, Jacquot pulled
the picture from his pocket and held it up.

Usually it would be a face, features to identify, but all
they had was the tattoo - three words one above the other
on a curled and shadowed scroll of parchment incised into
the victims upper thigh - the face too bloated and fish-
snacked to be of any practical value.

The tattooist looked once, thrusting out his chin as
though scrutinising a work of art, swallowed his mouthful
of brioche, sucked at his teeth with his tongue and top lip,
then shook his head.

It was the same story at the second tattoo parlour that
Jacquot visited, behind the Mercure Hotel on Quai des
Beiges, and at a third address near the Gare St-Charles.
But at the fourth, off rue Curiol, Jacquot came a little
closer.

Grunt work, it got you there in the end.

Surrounded by sample images of coiled serpents, fire-
breathing dragons, roaring lions, daggers plunged into
bleeding hearts and intricately worked native designs, a
bare-chested customer was slumped forward across a
table, head resting in his arms. Beside him, perched on a
stool and leaning over the canvas of his back, a rubber-
gloved tattooist worked on the wing feathers of a bird or
an angel. Like the other parlours Jacquot had visited, the
room was filled with the sharp smell of antiseptic, a bottle
of which the tattooist tipped out one-handed onto a swab
to wipe away the beads of blood from his customers
shoulder blade.