Anything Considered (26 page)

Georgette, of course, her intimate domestic connections with the fugitive giving her a certain cachet, was assumed to know more than anyone else, which she did. The case buried under the gravel in her
cave
was, she was certain, the stolen item. Having closed her shutters and locked her door against the insufferable curiosity of her neighbors—why couldn’t they mind their own business?—she disinterred the case and spent an extremely frustrating half hour trying to find the combination that would reveal the secret. She was quite sure that her Englishman, her little
milor
, hadn’t committed anything
more serious than a misdemeanor; it wasn’t in his nature. And yet … well, there was never an omelet without some broken eggs. She shook the case in frustration, hoping to hear a clue—the chink of coins, the rich rattle of jewelry—but the contents, whatever they were, had been too tightly packed. She knelt on the floor of the
cave
, put the case back in the shallow depression she had scooped out, and smoothed the gravel level. She would try again later, when there was less chance of being disturbed by people with nothing better to do than pry.

——

Julian Poe, whose taste in newspapers ran more to the
Wall Street Journal
than
Le Provençal
, had read the piece on Anna and Bennett with great interest but no particular alarm. After all, he knew where they were. He had them bottled up in Haute-Provence, under close surveillance. Gérard had called in to say that the signals from the homing device were still coming through, regular as a heartbeat. Nevertheless, this waiting was tiresome. If they hadn’t made a move by nightfall, he’d send Gérard in to pick them up and bring them in. As a rule, he avoided violence, which he considered a crude last resort. But his patience wasn’t infinite, and he had decided that Bennett should spend a few hours with Shimo, an irresistibly persuasive man when he put his mind to it. By this time tomorrow, both the case and the money would be back where they belonged. With the sense of satisfaction that
comes from a problem neatly solved, Poe turned his attention to Tuzzi, and revenge. That Italian clod needed to be taught a lesson.

——

Two police cars were waiting at Mandelieu airport to meet the helicopter, and the ride into Cannes, with traffic melting away in obedience to the blare of klaxons, was brief. Anna and Bennett, still dazed by the speed with which they had become official captured criminals, still bewildered by high-security treatment more suited to terrorists than to amateur thieves, clutched hands for comfort in the back of the car, their emotions deep-frozen. They might have been driving to their own execution.

They were taken into what is euphemistically known as the reception area of police headquarters in Cannes—hard-edged and hostile, with a whiff of fear hanging in the air—and booked. Pockets were emptied, prints taken; they were processed like two pieces of human flotsam. The desk sergeant reached up to the bulletin board where their photographs were on display, ripped the sheet down, and tossed it into a bin. Another hunt over, another case solved.

Captain Bonfils, casual in blue jeans and open-neck shirt, came through from his office in the back and stood scowling at them. If the cretins had to be caught, why couldn’t they have let it happen on a
sacré
weekday, instead of screwing up his weekend? He motioned them over with
an irritable flick of his hand, and led them down the corridor to Moreau’s office.

——

Moreau thought of himself, with some justification, as a man with a gift for cross-examination. Over the many years and thousands of hours he had spent squeezing information out of criminals, sifting lies from half-truths, coaxing confessions, he had developed his technique, refined the rhythm of his questioning, sharpened his skills of observation. The instinctive clenching of a hand, the sudden blink of an eye, the involuntary shift of position in a chair—these said as much to him as words. He thought of interrogation as a form of chess, a gradual, often indirect, series of moves that ultimately led to a position of no escape. Checkmate. He liked to take his time, something Bonfils seemed incapable of learning. Bonfils, now sitting over to one side, notebook on one knee, was essentially a shouter, a threatened a man who wore his violence on his face.

Moreau studied the couple sitting opposite him. Good-looking, he thought, both of them, but showing signs of strain around the mouth and eyes. That was encouraging. He took his pipe from his mouth, and smiled.

“So, Monsieur Bennett. It appears you no longer have the Rolls-Royce.”

Bennett hadn’t known what to expect, but certainly not this. “The Rolls-Royce?” His mouth was dry, his voice thin and defensive. “What Rolls-Royce?”

Moreau pointed with the stem of his pipe at the objects arranged on his desk: passports, cash and credit cards, and, attached to a well-worn leather-and-enamel fob decorated with the RR symbol, Bennett’s car keys.

“Oh, that. Just a present from someone in London, a long time ago.”

Moreau turned to Anna, and his expression became sympathetic. “I must offer you my condolences, mademoiselle. I understand that your mother is not at all well.”

Anna felt exactly what Moreau wanted her to feel: wrong-footed, shaken. “How do you know?”

“We have telephones. I have very helpful colleagues in New York. Information is so easy to obtain nowadays, now that the world has shrunk. Personal privacy hardly exists anymore. It’s terrible—isn’t that right, Bonfils?” The master glanced over at the novice.

Shut up and get on with it, you pompous old
connard
. “That’s right, chief. Terrible.”

Moreau suddenly seemed to find the contents of his pipe engrossing, scraping the bowl with a tool the shape of a narrow spoon, tapping the charred fragments into an ashtray, blowing gently through the mouthpiece. Apart from the small sounds he made, the room was still. Bonfils glowered in his corner. Anna and Bennett exchanged puzzled looks. Was this why they’d been rushed to Cannes—to watch a police inspector servicing his pipe? Bennett cleared his throat. Moreau ignored him and began feeding his pipe with tobacco from a wrinkled oilskin pouch.

At last, Bennett could stand the silence no longer.
“Could you tell us why we’ve been arrested? What have we done?”

Moreau looked up with an air of faint surprise, as though he’d forgotten they were there. “Why don’t you tell me?”

Bennett thought for a moment before giving what he hoped was a harmless answer. “Well, we were asked to pick up a case from this boat.”

“Asked by whom?”

“An old chum of Mademoiselle Hersh. Actually, it was a job. We were going to be paid.”

“By the old chum.”

“That’s right.”

“And the old chum, who is this?”

“A man called Poe. Julian Poe.”

“Ah yes.” Moreau returned to his pipe, using three matches before he was satisfied the tobacco was drawing evenly. “And this case that was on the boat, the case that Monsieur Poe was paying you to collect. What was in it?”

Bennett hesitated before the first lie. “It was locked. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.” Moreau picked up the two passports. “You left these on the boat.” He put them in a drawer of his desk. “Careless of you. Did you leave the boat unexpectedly? In a hurry?” He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and locked the passports in the desk drawer.

“Must have forgotten them.” The second lie.

“I see. What time was it when you left the boat? Approximately.”

“Oh, I don’t know. After dinner sometime.”

“With the case?”

“Yes.”

“Now, that would have been—what? Two days ago?

Three days ago?”

Bennett honestly couldn’t remember. “Something like that, yes.”

“And then, of course, you took the case to Monsieur Poe, and he paid you.”

“Well, we haven’t actually had a chance to—”

“Bennett.” Anna interrupted him, shaking her head. “Forget it. This is crazy. It won’t work.”

Moreau peered at her through a cloud of smoke and nodded with approval. “What a very sensible young woman you are. Now then, Monsieur Bennett, we’ll start again. Before you do, I’m going to tell you certain things that should influence your statement.” He took the pipe from his mouth and pointed the stem at Bennett. “One: the case contains a formula for the cultivation of truffles, which I’m sure you know. Two: you stole the case.”

“But it had already been—”

Moreau held up his hand for silence. “I’m simply telling you the facts as we know them. You can add to our knowledge, and for your own sakes, I hope you will. At the moment, both of you are under suspicion of robbery. I have no doubt we shall be able to prove the case against you, but the preparations will take several months, and naturally during that time you will be in jail.” Moreau fussed with his matches, and relit his pipe. “Then you will
be sentenced—and here there are circumstances that are not in your favor. Once the French government takes an interest in a case, as it has done on this occasion, it is no longer a simple question of common theft. It becomes more serious and will obviously carry a more serious sentence.”

“But that’s outrageous. It’s got nothing to do with the government.”

“It has now.” Moreau smiled, a thin-lipped, humorless smile. “I see from your records that you’ve lived in France for many years, Monsieur Bennett. I’m sure you will have noticed that the authorities here have considerable powers—powers which some foreigners feel are quite extreme. Very useful to us in the police, I must admit.”

Moreau allowed the threat a few moments to sink in. He had exaggerated a little, but only a little. The two faces opposite him were looking drawn and dispirited. He felt he was almost there. Now for the promise of a more pleasant alternative.

“Should you decide to cooperate with us fully, it can be arranged for charges to be dropped. Misunderstandings occur from time to time, as we all know, and this would be treated as an unfortunate case of mistaken identity, with official apologies for any inconvenience.”

Bennett looked at Anna. All he wanted to do was take her away, and leave Poe and Tuzzi and the bloody French police to argue among themselves. “Well? What’s it to be?” He touched her cheek with his hand. “I’ll go along with you.”

All the air seemed to leave her body in a single, sobbing sigh. She leaned over, turning away from Moreau, and rested her head on Bennett’s shoulder, the picture of defeat. Faintly, very faintly, he heard—he thought he heard—her whisper, barely louder than breath against his neck: “Don’t tell him about the bag.”

BENNETT started at the beginning, gaining slightly in confidence as he recited the early, innocuous details of his search for employment. Moreau leaned forward on his desk, chin supported by a steeple of fingers, muted plumbing sounds coming from the pipe clenched between his teeth. Anna remained silent, head bowed, willing Bennett to have heard the whispered sentence. Bonfils sulked and took notes. His preferred methods of interrogation involved truncheons and kidneys, not this interminable talking.

Bennett’s account of his first days in Monaco and the loss of the case prompted no more response than the occasional lifting of a Moreau eyebrow. It was not until he reached the point of his recall to the Domaine des Rochers, and Poe’s description of the contents of the case, that Moreau’s pipe came out of his mouth, followed by a question.

“This man,” said Moreau, “this
expert de truffes
employed by Poe—what is his name? What is his background?”

Bennett shook his head. “I was never told his name. He worked somewhere official before Poe found him, the department of something—agriculture, I suppose. I’m not sure.”

“A civil servant?”

“That’s right. I remember Poe mentioning a ministry, people not appreciating his work, things like that. Apparently, that’s why he left.”

“You never met him during your visits to Monsieur Poe’s property?”

Bennett shrugged. “Not a chance. He’s dead. Poe told me it was a car accident. Brake failure.”

“How very convenient that he finished his work first.” Moreau turned to Bonfils. “Check with the Ministry of Agriculture on Monday—resignations from the research department over the past four years, their
dossiers de travail
, the usual.” He turned back to Bennett. This was better than he’d hoped. Any research carried out on government time, and—stretching the point a little, but not too far—any results coming from that research, were the property of the state. The lawyers would make sure of that.
En plus
, the man was dead, so he wasn’t in a position to argue. It was working out very nicely. Moreau began to have visions of a minor decoration accompanying him into retirement. Services to France. That would go down well in his village in the Charente, establish him immediately as an
homme sérieux
, even a possible candidate for mayor. “Continue, monsieur.”

Bennett described being given the fake case, meeting
Anna in Nice, and their arrival on board the
Ragazza
for the floating auction. Bonfils was scribbling away diligently, and Moreau now started to take notes. “Give me names,” he said. “Everyone you can remember.”

“There was Tuzzi, the owner, and his partner, Lord Glebe. An American called Penato, Kasuga from Tokyo, and an older man, I think he said he was from Corsica. Polluce? Something like that.”

The mention of Polluce caused Bonfils to crouch even more diligently over his notes. His mind was churning with a number of possibilities, none of them pleasant. He could see his chances of promotion dwindling, but that was nothing compared to the other consequences of failing to deliver the case to Polluce and his friends. They could have him put back on the beat, dishing out parking tickets. Or worse. The Union Corse was not noted for its benevolence toward those who had fallen down on the job.
Merde
.

“Bonfils?” Moreau’s voice made him start. “One of your compatriots. Know anything about him, this Polluce?”

“Never heard of him, chief. I’ll check him out.”
Merde
again.

“So, Monsieur Bennett.” Moreau looked at his notes. “There you were, on the
Ragazza
, with your bogus valise. Then what happened?”