The French Confection Read online

  First the death of the steward on the train. Then the last whispered warning: “Beware the mad American!” And now this. There was a nasty smell in the air and already I knew it wasn’t just French cheese.

  “Which way, Nick?” Tim was waiting for me, holding a camera. He had already taken three photographs of the hotel, a streetlamp and a post-box and he was waiting for me in the morning sunlight. I wondered if he had remembered to put in a film.

  I thought for a moment. I was probably being stupid. We were here in Paris for the weekend and nothing was going to happen. I couldn’t even be sure that it really was Marc Chabrol who had fallen under the train. “Let’s try down there,” I said, pointing down the street.

  “Good idea,” Tim agreed as he turned the other way.

  What can I tell you about Paris? I’m no travel writer. I’m not crazy about writing and I can’t usually afford to travel. But anyway…

  Paris is a big city full of French people. It’s a lot prettier than London and for that matter so are the people. They’re everywhere: in the street-side cafés, sipping black coffee from thimble-sized cups, strolling along the Seine in their designer sunglasses, snapping at each other on the bridges through eighteen inches of the latest Japanese lens. The streets are narrower than in London and looking at the traffic you get the feeling that war has broken out. There are cars parked everywhere. On the streets and on the pavements. Actually, it’s hard to tell which cars are parked and which ones are just stuck in the traffic jams. But the strange thing is that nobody seems to be in a hurry. Life is just a big jumble that moves along at its own pace and if you’re in a hurry to leave then maybe you should never have come there in the first place.

  That first day, Tim and I did the usual tourist things. We went up the Eiffel Tower. Tim fainted. So we came down again. We went to the cathedral of Notre Dame and I took a picture of Tim and another of a gargoyle. I just hoped that when I got them developed I’d remember which was which. We went up the Champs Elysées and down the Jardin des Tuileries. By lunch-time, my stomach was rumbling. So, more worryingly, were my feet.

  We had an early supper at a brasserie overlooking another brasserie. That’s another thing about Paris. There are brasseries everywhere. Tim ordered two ham sandwiches, a beer for him and a Coke for me. Then I ordered them again using words the waiter understood. The sandwiches arrived: twenty centimetres of bread, I noticed, but only ten centimetres of ham.

  “This is the life, eh, Nick?” Tim sighed as he sipped his beer.

  “Yes, Tim,” I said. “And this is the bill.”

  Tim glanced at it and swallowed his beer the wrong way. “Ten euros!” he exclaimed. “That’s … that’s…!” He frowned. “How much is that?”

  “A euro’s worth about seven old francs,” I explained. “It’s about seventy pence. So the bill is about seven quid.”

  Tim shook his head. “I hate this new money,” he said.

  “I know,” I agreed. “Because you haven’t got any.”

  We were walking back in the direction of the hotel when it happened. We were in one of those quiet, antique streets near the Seine when two men appeared, blocking our way. The first was in his forties, tall and slim, wearing a white linen suit that was so crumpled and dirty, it hung off him like a used paper bag. He was one of the ugliest men I had ever seen. He had green eyes, a small nose and a mouth like a knife wound. None of these were in quite the right place. It was as if his whole face had been drawn by a six-year-old child.

  His partner was about twenty years younger with the body of an ape and, if the dull glimmer in his eyes was anything to go by, a brain to match. He was wearing jeans and a leather jacket and smoking a cigarette. I guessed he was a body-builder. He had muscles bulging everywhere and a neck that somehow managed to be wider than his head. His hair was blonde and greasy. He had fat lips and a tiny beard sprouting out of the middle of his chin.

  “Good evening,” White Suit said in perfect English. His voice came out like a whisper from a punctured balloon. “My name is Bastille. Jacques Bastille. My friend’s name is Lavache. I wonder if I might speak with you.”

  “If you want to know the way, don’t ask us!” Tim replied. “We’re lost too.”

  “I’m not lost. Oh, no.” Bastille smiled, revealing teeth the colour of French mustard. “No. But I want to know what he told you. I want to know what you know.”

  Tim turned to me, puzzled.

  “What exactly do you mean?” I asked.

  “The steward on the train. What did he tell you?” There was a pause. Then … “Lavache!”

  Bastille nodded and his partner produced what looked like a little model of that famous statue, the Venus de Milo. You know the one. The naked woman with no arms that stands somewhere in the Louvre.

  “No thank you,” Tim began. “We’re not…”

  Lavache pressed a button and ten centimetres of razor-sharp metal sprang out of the head of the statue. It was a neat trick. I don’t think the real statue ever did that.

  Tim stared at it.

  “Where is it?” Bastille demanded.

  “Your friend’s holding it in his hand!” Tim gasped.

  “Not the knife! Sacré bleu! Are all the English such idiots? I am talking about the object. The item that you were given this morning at the Gare du Nord.”

  “I wasn’t given anything!” Tim wailed.

  “It’s true,” I said, even though I knew that it wasn’t.

  Bastille blinked heavily. “You’re lying.”

  “No, we’re not,” Tim replied. “Cross my heart and hope to…”

  “Tim!” I interrupted.

  “Kill them both!” Bastille snapped.

  They really did mean to kill us there and then in that quiet Paris street. Lavache lifted the knife, his stubby fingers curving around the base, a bead of saliva glistening at the corner of his mouth. I glanced back, wondering if we could run. But it was hopeless. We’d be cut down before we could take a step.

  “The older one first,” Bastille commanded.

  “That’s him!” Tim said, pointing at me.

  “Tim!” I exclaimed.

  The knife hovered between us.

  But then suddenly a party of American tourists turned the corner – about twenty of them, following a guide who was holding an umbrella with a Stars and Stripes attached to the tip. They were jabbering excitedly as they descended on us. There was nothing Bastille and Lavache could do. Suddenly they were surrounded, and realizing this was our only chance I grabbed hold of Tim and moved away, keeping a wall of American tourists between us and our attackers. Only when we’d come to the top of the street where it joined the wide and busy Boulevard St Michel did we break away and run.

  But the two killers weren’t going to let us get away quite so easily. I glanced back and saw them pushing their way through the crowd. Bastille shoved out a hand and one of the tourists, an elderly woman, shrieked and fell backwards into a fountain. Several of the other tourists stopped and took photographs of her. Bastille stepped into the road. A car swerved to avoid him and crashed into the front of a restaurant. Two lobsters and a plateful of mussels were sent flying. Someone screamed.

  It still wasn’t dark. The streets were full of people on their way to restaurants, too wrapped up in their own affairs to notice two English visitors running for their lives. I had no idea where I was going and I wasn’t going to stop and ask for directions. I grabbed Tim again and steered him up an alleyway with dozens more restaurants on both sides. A waiter in a long white apron, carrying several trays laden with plates and glasses, stepped out in front of me. There was no way I could avoid him. There was a strangled cry, then a crash.

  “Excusez-moi!” Tim burbled.

  Fortunately, I didn’t know enough French to understand the waiter’s reply.

  The alleyway brought us back to the Seine. I could see Notre Dame in the distance. Only a few hours before we had been standing on one of its towers, enjoying the view. How could our
holiday have become a nightmare so quickly?

  “This way, Tim!” I shouted.

  I pulled him across a busy street, cars screeching to a halt, horns blaring. A gendarme turned round to face us, a whistle clenched between his teeth, his hands scrabbling for his gun. I swear he would have shot us except that we were already on the other side of the road and a few seconds later Bastille had reached him, brutally pushing him out of the way. The unfortunate gendarme spun round and collided with a cyclist. Both of them collapsed in a tangle of rubber and steel. The last I saw of the gendarme, he had got back to his feet and was shouting at us, making a curious, high-pitched noise. Evidently he had swallowed his whistle which had now got lodged in his throat.

  The river was now right in front of us with a pedestrian bridge leading over to the other side. Bastille and Lavache were already crossing the road, blocked for a moment by a bus that had slipped in between them and us.

  “The river!” I said.

  Tim reached into his pocket and took out his camera.

  “No!” I yelled. “I don’t want you to photograph it! I want us to cross it!”

  We ran onto the bridge, but I hadn’t taken more than a few steps before I saw that we’d made a bad mistake. The bridge was closed. There was a tall barrier running across the middle of it with a MEN AT WORK sign – but no sign at all of any men actually at work. They had left their tools, though. There was a wheelbarrow, a pile of steel girders, a cement mixer … even if we could have climbed over the fence it would have been hard to get through.

  “We’ve got to go back!” I shouted.

  But it was too late. Bastille and Lavache had already arrived at the entrance to the bridge and were moving more slowly, both of them smiling. They knew they had us trapped. Lavache had his knife out. It was difficult to hear with the noise of the traffic, but I think he was humming.

  We couldn’t go back. We couldn’t climb the fence. If we jumped over the side, we’d probably drown. This was only March and the water would be ice-cold. Just twenty metres separated us from the two Frenchmen. There was nothing we could do.

  And that was when I saw the boat. It was what they called a Bateau Mouche, one of those long, elegant boats with glass windows and ceilings that carry tourists up and down the river throughout the day and night. This one was full of people enjoying a dinner and dance. I heard the music drifting up to us. They were playing a waltz, the “Blue Danube”. A strange choice considering they were on the Seine. Already the boat was slipping under the bridge. Another few seconds and it would have disappeared down towards the Eiffel Tower.

  “Jump, Tim!” I ordered.

  “Right, Nick!” Tim jumped up and down on the spot.

  “No. I mean – jump off the bridge!”

  “What?” Tim looked at me as if I was mad.

  Bastille was only five steps away from us now. I ran to the edge of the bridge, hoisted myself up and jumped. Tim did the same, a few seconds behind me. I caught a glimpse of Bastille, staring at us, his face twisted between anger and amazement. Then I was falling through space with the river, the bridge and the boat corkscrewing around me. I thought I might have mistimed it but then my feet hit something and I crashed onto the deck. I was lucky. I had hit the front of the boat where there was a sheet of tarpaulin stretched out amid a tangle of ropes. It broke my fall.

  Tim was less fortunate. He had jumped a few seconds after me, allowing the boat to travel a few metres further forward. I heard the glass shatter as he went feet first through the glass roof. There were more screams and the music stopped. I pulled myself up and gazed groggily through a window. Tim had landed on one of the tables and was lying there, sprawled out, surrounded by broken plates and glasses and with what looked like a whole roast duck in his lap.

  “Que fais-tu? Qu’est-ce que se passe?”

  A man in a blue uniform had appeared on the deck. He was staring at me in horror. It was the captain of the Bateau Mouche. There were a couple of waiters with him. I didn’t even struggle as the three of them grabbed hold of me. I wondered if they were going to lock me up or throw me over the side. Certainly it didn’t look as if they were going to invite me in for a dance and something to eat.

  I twisted round and took one last look back at the bridge. Bastille and Lavache were leaning over the side, watching, and as I was dragged inside they vanished, swallowed up in the gathering gloom.

  DOWN AND OUT

  You won’t meet many thirteen-year-olds who have been locked up in prisons on both sides of the Channel, but I’m one of them. I did time in Strangeday Hall, sharing a cell with Johnny Powers, England’s public enemy number one*, and here I was in prison in Paris, this time with Tim. It was half past nine in the evening. We’d been given dinner – bread and water – but the fact that it was French bread and Perrier didn’t make it taste any better.

  Miraculously, neither Tim nor I had been hurt jumping from the bridge. The captain had locked us both up in the kitchen on board the ship and by the time we docked, the police were already waiting. I suppose he must have radioed on ahead. I hadn’t tried to argue as we were thrown into the back of a van and driven at high speed through the streets of Paris. Nobody spoke English and even if they had they wouldn’t have believed us. I assumed they’d call the British consul or someone. I would leave the explanations until then.

  Neither of us had said anything for a while but at last Tim broke the silence. “That’s the last time I buy a Bestlé yoghurt,” he muttered.

  “It wasn’t their fault, Tim,” I said, although I knew how he felt. We hadn’t even been in Paris one day and we’d witnessed one murder, been chased by two killers and were now locked up ourselves. It was probably just as well that we weren’t planning to stay a whole week. “I just wish I knew what it was all about,” I added.

  “They tried to kill us, Nick,” Tim explained. “They nearly did kill us!”

  “I noticed, Tim. But why?”

  Tim thought for a moment. “Perhaps they don’t like foreigners?” he suggested.

  “No. They were looking for something. Something they thought we had.” I already knew it had to be tied in with Marc Chabrol, the steward we had met at the Gare du Nord, and the sachet of sugar he had given us. But what could be so important about a packet of sugar? It was still in my back pocket. I reached in and took it out. “This is what they were after,” I said.

  “Sugar?”

  “Unless there’s something else inside…”

  I was about to open it there and then but at that moment the door opened and a young policeman with close-cropped hair and glasses walked in. I slipped the sachet back into my pocket. I could always examine it later.

  “This way, please,” the policeman said.

  He led us back out and down a corridor, then into an interrogation room that smelled of cigarette smoke. There was a table and three chairs but nothing else, not even a window. A naked light bulb hung on a short flex from the ceiling. The policeman gestured and we all sat down.

  “You are English,” he said.

  “That’s right,” I said. The man obviously had a first-class brain.

  “This is an outrage!” Tim exclaimed. “You can’t keep us here. I demand to speak to the British ambassador! If the British ambassador is busy, I’ll speak to his wife.”

  The policeman leaned forward. “First of all, monsieur, I can keep you here for as long as I wish,” he said. “And secondly, I doubt very much that the British ambassador would be interested in you. Or his wife!”

  “Why wouldn’t he be interested in his wife?” Tim asked.

  The policeman ignored him. “You and your small brother have caused great damage to one of our Bateaux Mouches,” he went on. “It is most fortunate that nobody was injured. I wish to know why the two of you jumped off the bridge. You were trying to commit suicide, perhaps? Or could it have been a joke?”

  “It was no joke,” I said. “There were two men trying to kill us…”

  The policeman looked
at me in disbelief.

  “It’s true,” I went on. “They said their names were Bastille and Lavache. They had a knife…”

  “Tell me your names,” the policeman commanded. He took out a notebook and prepared to write.

  “I’m Tim Diamond,” Tim said. “You may have heard of me.”

  “No, monsieur…”

  “Well, I’m a well-known detective back in London.” Tim pointed at the notebook. “That’s the capital of England,” he added, helpfully.

  The policeman paused and took a deep breath. He was getting older by the minute. “I am aware of that,” he said. “May I ask, what is your business here in Paris?”

  “Of course you can ask!” Tim said.

  The policeman groaned. “What is your business?” he demanded.

  “We’re on holiday,” I told him. “We only arrived today. We’re staying in Le Chat Gris in the Latin quarter…”

  The policeman looked at me strangely, as if he were seeing me properly for the first time. “Le Chat Gris…” he repeated. He closed the notebook. “Could you please wait here for a minute.”

  He stood up and left the room.

  In fact it was ten minutes before he returned. The moment he walked in, I noticed there was something different about him. He was brisk, emotionless. And when he spoke, he did his best not to meet our eyes. “I have spoken with my superior officer,” he said. “And he says that you are free to go!”

  “How can we be free to go when we’re locked up in here?” Tim asked.

  “No, no, no, monsieur. He says that you may leave.”

  “They’re unlocking the door and letting us out,” I explained.

  “As far as we are concerned, this incident is closed.” The policeman did the same to his notebook.

  “What about Bastille and Lavache?” I asked.