Folly Du Jour - Barbara Cleverly [26]
Fourier dropped the card carelessly on to his desk amongst the disordered piles of papers cluttering the surface. ‘But a commander who has no crew, no ship and has entered foreign waters. Seems to me you’re up the creek without a paddle, Commander.’ Fourier’s hacking, gurgling cough, Joe realized, was laughter and a sign that he was enjoying his own overworked image. ‘You seem to have a turn of speed at least though, I’ll grant you that! How in hell did you manage to get here so fast? Crime wasn’t committed until late last evening.’
Joe decided to ignore the slight and respond to the human element of curiosity. ‘Wings,’ he said with a smile. ‘Wings across the Channel. The night flight from Croydon. We landed a second or two before Lindbergh. I was coming to Paris anyway. I’m to represent Britain at the Interpol conference at the Tuileries.’ Joe’s smile widened. ‘I’m due to give a paper on Day 3 ... You might be interested to come along and hear . . . It’s on international co-operation, illustrated by specific examples of Franco-British liaison.’
A further bark expressed disbelief and scorn. Joe held out his hand. ‘My card? Would you? I’m sure I saw you drop it into this rats’ nest.’ He kept his hand outstretched and steady – an implied challenge – until his card was safely back in his grasp.
‘And now, to business,’ he said briskly. ‘Perhaps you’d like to introduce me to your prisoner and outline the grievance you have with him.’
At last he felt he could turn and look at George with a measure of composure. Had he reacted at once according to his gut instinct, he would have hauled Fourier over his desk by his greasy braces and smashed a fist into his face.
George was almost unrecognizable. Old and weary, he had been put to stand in the centre of the room, back to the window, in bloodstained undervest and drooping evening trousers. Braces and belt had been taken away, his shoes gaped open where the laces had been removed. A familiar procedure. But used here, Joe guessed, not so much to prevent the prisoner from hanging himself as to humiliate him. One eye was blackened and a bruise was spreading over his unshaven jaw. He seemed uncertain as to how to greet Joe and embarrassed by his own appearance. His slumped shoulders straightened when Joe and Bonnefoye turned to him and he shifted slightly on his feet, planted, Joe noticed, in the soldier’s ‘at ease’ position. But there was nothing easy about George’s circumstances.
Joe decided to play it unemotionally and by the book. ‘Sir! How very good to see you again after all this time. My sympathy and apologies for the plight in which you find yourself. I’m at your service.’
George licked his lips and finally managed, in a ghost of his remembered voice, to drawl: ‘Jolly good! Well, in that case, perhaps you could rustle up a glass of water, eh? Perhaps even some breakfast? Hospitality around here not wonderful . . . I’ve eaten and drunk nothing since a light pre-theatre snack yesterday. Though I discern . . .’ he said, waving a hand under his nose, ‘that you two boulevardiers have been at it already. Onion soup, would that be?’
Bonnefoye looked down at his feet, unable to meet Joe’s eye.
If he gave way to the explosion of rage that was boiling within him, Joe realized he would be thrown off the premises at best, perhaps even arrested and lined up alongside. At all events, he might expect a damning report on his conduct to be winging its way to Scotland Yard in a mail bag aboard the next Argosy with all the predictable consequences for his future career with Interpol. A passing