Jacquot and the Waterman (28 page)

Of course she should have known better, just assuming
it was a cab and the driver a cabbie, but she'd been at sea
so long. She'd lost her land legs, her experience of city
streets. And she was tired of walking, not knowing where
she was.

'You want where?' asked a gruff voice and she bent
closer to the cab's warm interior, tried to say 'Vieux Port'
again, embarrassed by her poor French, and then felt a
hand grab the front of her dress, fingers reaching for a grip
inside the bodice and pulling her down. And her not
resisting because, stupidly, she didn't want the dress to rip.
Then that sharp prick in the neck, like a wasp sting, that
she tried to brush away. Only her arm suddenly wouldn't
operate the way she wanted it to, just like the rest of her
body, which was now being bundled into the passenger
footwell, wedged under the dash, the car door slamming
shut, the dress pulled tight, so she knew it had caught in
the door, dammit
. . .

Then nothing, just a passage of time. The sound of a car
wheel close by, drumming over cobbles, singing over
tarmac. The warm, rubbery smell of the floor mat against
her cheek. An absorption with the tangle of wires above
her head, their colours, the way they bent and coiled, the
little plastic box into which they disappeared. But no
anxiety at her predicament, no real concern that her limbs
refused to do what she wanted them to do.

Hey ho, she thought, and sighed contentedly, feeling a
bubble of laughter work its way up her chest as the car
turned sharply to the left. Or was it the right? Slowed and
stopped. The engine died and she lay there in the ticking
silence, heard the drivers door open and close and the
sound of steps coming round the car. Then the passenger
door opened, her dress loosened and she was lifted out.

The last thing Jilly saw that she could identify with any
certainty was the domed roof of Aqua-Cité, the one she'd
seen from
Anemone's
deck the day they arrived in the old
port of Marseilles. That, and the salty tang of the sea.

Part
Two

Aqua-Cité, Marseilles, Wednesday

t was the constant, comforting sound of bubbles that Gabrielle liked. No silence here in this cool, watery
place that smelt of the sea and the damp of buried concrete. Just that gentle bubbling. If the place had been
silent, Gabrielle wouldn't have liked it at all. Below ground
and all. Dark and shadowy. She'd have been spooked for
sure. As it was, the playful sound kept her company, a
light-hearted accompaniment to her humming.

Gabrielle Blanot arrived at her usual time, a little before
six, making the journey from her home in Vieille Chapelle
on her husband's Solex, letting herself in through one of the
two service doors set into the perimeter of Aqua-Cité. In
the staff changing rooms, she zipped up her overalls, made
some coffee and, after her first cigarette of the day, set off
for Block Seven - Reef Feeders and Open Sea - the first of
the th ree areas she was responsible for. With only one row
of tanks, a dozen in all, Seven was an easy job, an hour at

most, a good way to start the shift.

The bubbling sound came to her as she unlocked the
service door,

entered into the cool, concrete bunker and felt
for the light switch. Above her a line of neon tubes
flickered and blinked on, one after another, casting an icy
blue glow over the feeding gallery - a stepped walkway set
above the tanks and concealed from the public's side. If
Monsieur and Madame thought it was just fish that they
were looking at, they'd be in for a surprise. Above and
behind the tanks was a real backstage area unseen by
visitors, a concrete-walled space fretted with lagged pipes
and stained with calcified leaks, where oxygen flow and
temperature controls were located, where food supplies
and cleaning equipment were stored and where Gabrielle
Blanot worked.

Climbing the ladder to the feeding catwalk she began
her slow, methodical progress along the tanks. Gabrielle
could have done the job i n her sleep. Some mornings it felt
like she did: checking oxygen and temperature levels at
each station, measuring the feed into plastic hoppers
before tipping it into the tank beneath, and then watching
the hungry swirl of colours from the fish before moving on
to the next tank. Then the next, until she reached the final
tank, the food pellets spraying over the surface of the water
like a sudden squall of rain. As she stowed the hopper and
closed the food locker there was a slap and splash as one of
the inhabitants in the tank below got a little carried away
and broke surface.

Gabrielle smiled. Oscar again. She'd put money on it.
The striped bass. The biggest mouth in the tank.

Making her way back along the catwalk to the ladder,
she glanced at her watch. When she finished the next
round - Block Six, Trcrpicals - and before she began Five -
Crustaceans - there'd be plenty of time to stop for a coffee
with her friends Tula and Corinne before the supervisor,
Barzé, made an appearance. That Tula, thought Gabrielle,
clambering down the ladder at the end of the catwalk -
what a girl she was, what a riot. Married with three kids
but she still managed to find the time and the energy to put
herself about.

Leaving by a second service door, which led to Block
Seven's public area, switching off the lights and locking up
behind her, Gabrielle stepped out into the visitor walkway
and started up the slope to the block's ground-level
entrance. On one side were the tanks she'd just prepped,
on the other a twenty-metre-long panel of glass set below
the surface of the new open-sea aquarium. Gabrielle
hummed as she walked, gazing idly through the glass, the
sandy seabed stretching away into a blue-green distance.

This four-acre open-sea extension to the main aquarium
had taken two years to build and though it had only been
open a few months had already proved a massive visitor
draw. It comprised two long concrete jetties, curving out
from the shore, and set with viewing panels beneath the
su rface. Where the jetties ended, thirty metres apart, the
mouth of the pool was secured with a Mylar steel web
whose two-square-centimetre weave was large enough to
allow shoals of smaller coastal fish to swim in and out
freely, but narrow and strong enough to keep the larger
fish in: the fat-lipped potato cod, the Napoleon wrasse, the
barracuda and tuna, half a dozen rays, a couple of leather-
back turtles and the pack of reef sharks whose white-
tipped fins slicing the surface always brought a gasp from
the crowd.

Set around the open-sea pool like a random pattern of
stepping stones, a half-dozen man-made islands broke the
surface, built up from the sea floor to control storm surge
and provide extra viewing possibilities from the bridges
that connected them. Between two of these islands there
was even a see-through plastic tunnel set thirty feet below
the surface near the mouth of the pool, the deepest part of
this open-sea feature.