Jacquot and the Waterman (4 page)

Madame Foraque watched him cross the hall - the hair,
she thought to herself; when was he going to do something
about his hair? Far too long. And those boots! The pointed
toes. He'd regret it one day.

'She was no good, Jacquot,' she called out as he pulled
the door open. 'No good. You're better off without her,
believe me.'

'That's what you always tell me,
Grand'maman.
Maybe
this time you're right.'

And with that, Chief Inspector Daniel Jacquot stepped
out into the glare of a Marseilles morning and was gone.

Boni. Boni Milhaud.

The tight, sky-blue jacket and the pencil skirt with
that winking pleat behind the knees. The silver wings on
her lapel and that crisp little airline cap of hers clipped to a
brunette bob.

Jacquot remembered every detail. Flight 427, Charles
de Gaulle to Djibouti, via Marignane, Marseilles. Air
France. A Sunday night. Last flight out. Two years come
July. The plane was packed, but she'd caught his eye as she
went through the safety drill, pulling the tapes on the life
jacket. Those eyes just latching onto his as if to say I hope
you're paying attention.

He'd been surprised to see her walking the crew channel at Marignane where he got off, even more surprised to
find her still waiting at the cab rank when she'd had such a
head start. He spotted her from the concourse where he'd
stopped to buy cigarettes. While he waited at the counter,
a half-dozen cabs had come by and she'd shaken her head
at each. He wondered if she was waiting for someone. So
he went out to the rank. And she
was
waiting for someone.
Him. They took the next cab that came along. She didn't
go all the way on a Sunday night, she told him. To
Djibouti. Not Sundays.

Which had made him smile.

At his suggestion, the cab dropped them at Chez Peire
in Le Panier. They'd only got a table that late because it
was him. Jacquot. Hallway through their meal, Boni had
looked at him over her wine glass and told him how tired
she was, and how she just hated taking off her own
stockings. And that was that. So much for not going all the
way on a Sunday night.

That first night, after Chez Peire, she'd taken him to the
Hotel Mercure overlooking the Quai des Beiges. And
every time after that, whenever she passed through, stopping overnight, she'd call him from Charles de Gaulle, and
that's where they'd end up. Hotel Mercure, fifth floor.
Where the Air France crews put up. Where Jacquot
quietly fell in love - and she, he believed, fell in love with
him.

One of the things that Boni liked was that people knew
him, recognised him. Jacquot noticed it early on, whenever someone looked at him in that particular way, placed
him, remembered. How she'd tighten her arm around his,
making it clear that he was hers, sharing the glow when
people stopped to shake his hand, buy him a drink. Even
after all that time. The celebrity. That's what appealed to
her. His past. What he had done on the playing field all
those years before. In his blue shirt with its gold
coq
insignia. The winning try. Against the English. All this time
and people still remembered. The ponytail. The double
takes. The smiles of recognition. Nothing to do with the
police, the job he had, though Boni liked that too - its
glamour, its roughness, the way Jacquot knew his city.

Then, three months after that last flight out from Paris,
Boni relocated to Marseilles and moved into his place, the
apartment on Moulins, top floor, under the disapproving
glare of Madame Foraque. Of course they were never
going to hit it off, the two women. The smell of the
Widows soups, bubbling thickly on her range, the reek of
her cheroots, the rolled-down socks she wore, the too-heavy mascara globbing her eyelashes and the pink pools
of rouge on her cheeks. The way she peered round the
glass-panelled door of the
conciergerie
whenever she
heard a footfall in the hallway, always greeting him with a
'Jacquot,
ça va?
Some soup?', but never saying more than
a 'Mademoiselle' to Boni, a brief little toss of her head.
No, those two were never going to get on.

At first, in Marseilles, Boni worked as ground staff at
the Air France office on Canebiere in the centre of town.
But it wasn't long before she was back on flights. Twenty-
seven years old. Chief purser now. Transatlantic routes
from Marseilles to New York, Boston, Los Angeles. Back
and forth. Six days round trip, door to door, four days off.
Which was not the way that Jacquot liked it. The week
crept by and the four days zipped past. But Boni never
seemed to mind, bustling up the stairs loaded with bags
from Fifth Avenue and Rodeo Drive, this and that, four
hundred filterless Gitanes for him, a bottle of good cognac.
And her smile and that warm scented hug and, in the early
days, the searching hands, shedding her uniform, drawing
him through the bags and the wrappings to the bedroom
or the sofa, or the small balcony when it was warm
enough. That was what it was all about for Boni. The leaving and the returning. The heat and the passion of it.

Then, one afternoon while she was away, Jacquot was
calling at the Novotel to check some credit-card fraud that
the management had reported when he saw her leave the
bar with a man, watched her cross the reception area and
get into the lift with him. If Jacquot had worked in an
office, he'd never have seen her. But he did see her, caught
her red-handed, while she was supposed to be serving
lunch in first class thirty-five thousand feet somewhere
above the Atlantic. That was what really hurt Jacquot. The
deception, as much as the infidelity. But he'd said nothing.
She was younger than him, nearly twenty years. So what?
A little on the side. Who didn't? He could maybe imagine
doing the same himself. In the time they'd been together,
he'd come close, he'd be the first to admit. But coming
close was as far as he'd got. Whereas Boni. . .

For a while he persuaded himself that he didn't mind. It
wasn't important. And she still loved him, regardless, the
thing he was sure of. But then, sometime later, they'd
argued about some silly, stupid trifle - the way she always
left a coffee ring on the bathroom windowsill and how she
never wiped it away, leaving the job to him, the lack of
consideration - and before he could take it back he'd said
it, said what he should have kept quiet about. Seeing her at
the Novotel, adding something spiteful about the last flight
from Paris, not going all the way to Djibouti, just for good
measure. At which she'd given him a stunned, then pitiful
look and slammed out of the apartment.

Six days later she was back, tearful, tanned and sorrowful. And he'd forgiven her, and they'd made it up, under
the stars, out on the balcony.

Then, not six months later, she was pregnant, throwing
up into the basin he'd just washed his face in. The sheer
wonderful joy of it for him. Fatherhood. He'd walked to
the office, the morning she told him, with a spring in his
step and a whistle on his lips. But a week into the third
month, Boni lost it. A smeared stain on the bedsheet and a
gentle smile creasing her bloodless face, her head settling
back on the pillow, no tears brimming in her eyes. And
he'd known, kneeling beside the bed, known as certainly as
he could, that she was relieved, known too that the child
she'd lost had not been his.