Honourable Intentions (23 page)

Ranklin said: “I don’t want to tie us down. She’s no good friend of ours, and once we get aboard that barge we have to treat everyone as a likely enemy. Otherwise one of us could get hurt.”

Jay certainly saw the sense of that.

“Only we don’t kill Mrs Langhorn,” O’Gilroy repeated.

“Look: we know they’ll be armed and after this morning, they could be jumpy, there’s no saying what could happen.”

“I’m saying it. She don’t get killed. That’s all, and all there is to it.”

Now Jay had become watchful.

“I’m only trying to give us all freedom of action,” Ranklin said patiently. “If we tackle this with divided aims, then—”

“Ye can explain all ye want and talk fairy rings round me, but ’less ye give me yer word the woman don’t get killed, ye do it without me.”

There was a pause, then Ranklin asked: “Why?”

O’Gilroy said doggedly: “I know what we’re in don’t have rules nor laws. But mebbe that means we have to make our own. Sometimes, anyways.”

“So you’re making a rule that—”

“And sometimes it means we should do more thinking than anyone asked us to do when we was soldiers.”

There was silence between them. Not in the café: that was filling up as people, all men, drifted in for the French equivalent of afternoon tea. A man who looked like a lawyer was standing at the bar next to one who looked like a house-painter, the current job involving blue paint. The lawyer wasn’t standing
too
close, but it was still an example of the café’s
fraternité.

And in their private corner, Jay was finding himself bridging a split in a team that moments ago he had thought legendary. He suggested tentatively: “Could we perhaps redefine the mission as going to rescue her? I mean, we should have an objective – shouldn’t we?”

“And then what have we got?” Ranklin demanded. “A woman whose claim started all this, free to speak out whenever and whatever she likes.”

There was another pause, then Jay said: “You
do
want her dead, don’t you?”

“What do
you
want?” Ranklin flared. “
You
tell me how else we’re going to kill off this conspiracy?”

Jay searched his mind for an argument that would get through to Ranklin, and hoping he’d found one, began cautiously: “Should we look at it this way? – suppose we killed off Gorkin’s chief witness, couldn’t he make something of that? I mean that whatever he then said she would have said, wouldn’t it have the ring of a deathbed statement?” And when this had come out sounding like good sense, he was emboldened to go on: “And then there’s the Paris police to think about. A shooting match on the barge is going to stir things up a bit. They may not mind a few dead anarchists, but when they establish who she is, I think we’d have some real explaining to do – and that’s just what we don’t want. Isn’t it?”

And that, he thought, is a pretty well-reasoned argument –
and to his chagrin, O’Gilroy brushed it a side. “Sure, sure, that’s good thinking, but it’s not what I’m saying. I’m jest asking what’s she done to get killed for? Nobody says she ever killed anyone herself, nor ever like to. Ye said yeself she’s no part of this plot, she’s jest trying to get her boy out of jail, and probly a prisoner herself now. All she’s done is spread talk about yer King, and ye don’t know every word of that isn’t God’s own truth. And is
that
the reason she deserves killing?”

After a while, Ranklin said quietly: “All right. We rescue her. Where’s the
toilette
in this place?”

When he had gone, Jay looked queryingly at O’Gilroy. “What’s happened to him?”

“Never ye mind. ‘Tis all right now. Ye heard him, din’t ye? –we rescue the lady. Have ye still got that damn great pistol with ye?”

*           *           *

They had the taxi unload them at the corner of the Avenue d’Allemagne and the Rue de la Moselle, which led down to the
bassin
quayside. The narrow street ran between big warehouses and was in deep shadow.

“Have we all got pistols close to hand?” Ranklin asked calmly. “And fully loaded?”

Jay nodded. O’Gilroy said: “Got a spare magazine and can have it changed in three seconds. Tell us how long it takes with yer own little popgun.”

Ranklin took his “popgun”, actually a short Bulldog revolver, from his pocket and folded a newspaper over his hand. The simple professionalism of the move did a lot to restore Jay’s faith in the near future. Then they came out into bright sunlight of the quayside itself.

O’Gilroy nodded along it. “ ’Bout a coupla hundred yards down on yer left. Tied up on the far side of one called the
Juliette.”

Ranklin set the pace, neither skulking nor hurrying, just businessmen going about their business. They stepped over
mooring lines and around piled sacks of cargo until . . .

“She’s gone,” O’Gilroy said. “Moved, anyways.”

“You’re sure?”

“There’s
the Juliette.”

“Keep walking. And keep an eye out for her.”

Jay suggested: “We could ask at that café.”

But Ranklin had already summed up the café and its clientele; this one did not look fraternal. “No. Someone there might tip them off.”

They kept on walking for another quarter of a mile, to the end of the
bassin
where the quayside merged with the Avenue d’Allemagne, and paused among the more cosmopolitan crowd there. Without jay noticing, Ranklin had pocketed his pistol again.

“We could search the whole
bassin,
but I don’t see why they’d move at all unless they’re going somewhere else. I think they got scared off by this morning’s events.”

O’Gilroy lit a cigarette. “So now d’ye want to charge into their café instead?”

“No, I damned well don’t.” He’d need three times as many men to rush the
Deux Chevaliers,
and probably wouldn’t do it even then; if anyone was left there, they could be expecting that. “But we may as well look at the place while we’re down here. If you remember where it is, see if you can find a taxi who’ll drive us past it.”

It took O’Gilroy a few minutes, but he came back with a taxi and said: “He’ll do it, but says the excitement’s probly all over now. I asked him what excitement and he don’t really know, but thinks it was police business.”

“Does he mean the shooting this morning?”

“Doubt it. Not in the same street and more’n a quarter-mile away.”

The taxi turned off the Avenue and chugged uphill into the tawdry streets jay had walked that morning. From inside a taxi was a far better way to see them; he’d remember that walk for an awfully long time.

Then they were in a street with railway arches on one side,
most filled in with rickety doors and occasional small businesses like a stone-mason’s or jobbing builder’s. On the other side a couple of identical touring cars were parked, and an inner group of arguing men, some in police uniform, surrounded by a ring of gawping locals.

“Apparently not all over,” Ranklin observed.

“There’s my chap from the
Sûreté!”
jay exclaimed. “Should we stop?”

“Fine.”

“Police raid,” O’Gilroy said dourly, having an ingrained dislike of police raids.

While Jay chatted to the
Sûreté
officer, Ranklin stood in the street, lit his pipe, and looked genially around. O’Gilroy, unwilling to show his face unnecessarily, stayed in the taxi where the depth of the hood put the back seat in permanent shadow. The café was in the middle of a jumbled row of houses, was no wider than them, and had its windows – one cracked – mostly blanked out by dirty lace curtains and sports posters. Policemen went in and out, but not with any sense of purpose. To Ranklin, it looked like make-work, as if the raid had found nothing.

Then he became aware of sullen dark eyes watching him from among the spectators, looked again, and recognised Berenice Collomb. The hat was gone, and the coat replaced with a shawl, but it was the same faded green dress and dead-fish pout. He smiled, walked over and raised his hat.

“Bonjour, Ma’mselle.”

She muttered: “
B’jour.”

“I did not know you were back in Paris.”

“We came this morning.”

“We?”

“Your rich lady friend also.” She almost smiled at his polite surprise.

“Is she around here?”

“Her?” She came close to laughing. “Not her, not down here. I came home by myself and I find . . . this. Did you start it?”

“Not me. I don’t tell the
Préfecture
what to do.”

“This isn’t the
Préfecture,
it’s the
Sûreté.”
But his mistake had been intentional, a false proof of genuine innocence. “Now the
Préfecture’s
turned up as well and they’re arguing about who owns us.”

“Ah. Did they arrest anyone?”

“All the little birds had flown.”

“Not swum?”

Her face died. He had suddenly rejoined the mistrusted ranks of Them.

Ranklin took his pipe from his mouth and examined it critically. “The
flics
don’t seem to know about the barge. But if I can’t find it, I suppose I’ll have to tell them. They’ve got the men and resources.”

“Why do you want to find it?”

“I want to talk to Graver’s mother.”

“Kaminsky and his mates will shoot your stupid head off.”

“Kaminsky? Oh, the proprietor. Chap with smallpox scars? No, I wouldn’t want to get shot. So perhaps I’d better leave it to the
flics.”

They had drawn back a little from the spectating locals, but still attracted glances whenever the fuss between the two police forces got dull. Berenice looked around uneasily. “
Alors,
I can’t be seen talking so much to you. Give me some money and I’ll come in the taxi with you.”

Ranklin blinked, at least mentally. First he was a gentleman gawper, now he was buying a lady of the streets. Oh well, it was all disguise, of a sort. “How much are you worth?”

“If you were young and handsome, five francs. To you, ten.”

He handed over the coin. She frowned and bit it, but probably just to make sure the neighbours noticed. Then she pulled the shawl tighter around herself and got into the taxi. O’Gilroy moved to the jump seat and smiled uneasily at her.

Ranklin motioned to him to shut the partition to the driver, then said: “
Eh bien,
where has the barge gone?”

“Why do you want to talk to that old cow?”

“I have my reasons, but it should help prove Grover is innocent. Now—”

“Oh, I know he’s innocent, all right. The pansy.”

A bit puzzled, Ranklin said: “I know
you
know, you were . . . with him that night. But I’m talking about proving it.”

“I wasn’t fucking him that night! I’m never going to again! He has a tiny cock and fucks like a Ford auto: bang-bang-bang, pouf.”

If Ranklin’s face showed nothing, he must really be getting good at his job. Because even disregarding her language – which wasn’t easy – his tactical base had dissolved. If that was really how Berenice now thought about Grover, he felt he’d been pulling on a rope and suddenly found it wasn’t tied to anything. And he daren’t look to O’Gilroy for support: when the translation seeped into the prim Irishman, he’d go into shock.

But the immediate point was that love’s young dream had somehow gone smash, and Ranklin had to start again from there. “Return to the barge. D’you think Mrs Langhorn is aboard it?”

“It’s possible.”

“Where else might she be?”

Shrug.

“And which way would it have gone?”

Shrug.

“Perhaps I’d better tell the
flics
about it after all. And if anybody wonders who told me, well, I was seen talking to you.”

“You are a septic fat capitalist pig.” She said it without rancour, as if it were a precise description. But it showed that Ranklin had got the rope tied back on to her.

“Continue.”

“It will be going out of Paris, of course. Out of the
Préfecture’s
area. Up the Canal de l’Orque towards Meaux.”

“Do you know this or are you just guessing?”

She shrugged. “Did you really think they’d go down to the Seine through all those locks? And then upstream against the current? That way, they wouldn’t be out of Paris until midnight.” What Ranklin knew about the Paris canals he could
write on his thumb-nail. “And I’ve heard them talking about some comrades in Meaux.”

“How fast does a horse-drawn barge go?”

“It doesn’t have a horse,” she sneered. “Don’t you know that Grover (stupid little boy) was helping put a motor in it?” Now he thought of it, Noah Quinton had said the lad had been putting an engine into a canal boat, that was his excuse for buying petrol. But Ranklin had forgotten it as just part of the defence. A good spy does not forget such details.

“Then how fast does it go now?”

She shrugged again. “He said it wouldn’t go faster than you can walk.” Which would be about three miles an hour, and they might have been gone four hours, which made twelve miles . . .

“And how far is Meaux?”

But this she really didn’t know; it was just a name to her. And to Ranklin. So the barge could be there already.

He yanked open the driver’s partition. “How far i? it to Meaux?”

“D’you want to go there? I’m not—”

“No, no. Just how far?”

Shrug. “Forty kilometres, perhaps.”

Thirty miles. Ten hours. Thank God for that. He sat back, thinking.

Jay came back soon after that. “I had a word with–” Then he saw Berenice, swept off his hat and bowed. “
Bonjour, Ma’mselle. Quelle surprise charmante – mais ca c’est votre ville natale, n’est-ce pas?”
Berenice didn’t like Jay. Of course, she didn’t like anybody much, but Jay was special since he looked like an anarchist’s cartoon of an aristocrat. He smiled at her dull glare. “Does this mean the delicious Mrs Finn is also in town?”

“Apparently. We’re going round there.” He leant forward to give the driver Corinna’s Boulevard des Capucines address.

“I’m sure Mrs Finn will be overcome to see Miss Collomb again. So soon.”

“Quite.” Ranklin turned to Berenice. “
Mille remerciements, Ma’mselle—”