Jacquot and the Waterman (67 page)

Claudine had calmed down since her first-night show and celebratory supper, waking in an empty bed to all the usual doubts and uncertainties. It had been a haul getting herself up and coming in to work, sitting alone in the same gallery that had hummed the night before, manning the desk in case someone stopped by and felt like buying.

Like the man who'd just come in. Only the second that afternoon. The morning had been fine, a load of people passing by and coming
in,
but after lunch she might as well have closed up. In fact, she'd been thinking of doing exactly that when the buzzer sounded and the door opened. And in he came.

Claudine had just about plucked up enough courage to leave her desk and introduce herself, when he turned to her and said:

'She's very good, isn't she?'

Which stopped Claudine in her tracks. How to respond? She could either say it just so happened she was the artist and thank you so much. Or pretend she wasn't; play along as the gallery assistant he clearly imagined she was.

'She'd be very pleased to hear you say that,' she replied, feeling her neck redden, cross with herself that she hadn't had the nerve to tell the truth. 'Any artist would.'

'She's really got a touch.' He was standing in front of the canvas entitled
Ripe 2,
two glass preserving jars filled with figs, the fruit strangely disfigured by the varying thickness of the glass. 'She's got the colour, the shade. Real texture. And seeing the figs pushed up against the sides of the jars gives them a real sense
of...
I don't know . . .' He looked to the floor as if he'd find the word there. 'Form, I guess. Life.'

For a moment Claudine wondered if this was the start to a pick-up line. The kind of thing he tried on shop girls - which he now assumed she was - to initiate a conversation. A gentle flirting.

But Claudine wasn't convinced. He'd really been looking at the piece, and everything he said about it - the way the jar changed the shape of the figs, either through the thickness or touch of the glass - was exactly the effect she had sought to achieve.

Then he looked at the title card to see the price and nodded, as though he'd expected as much.

He moved on. 'I was supposed to be at the opening last night but I got held up. Did you go? Was it fun?'

Which knocked the breath out of her. It couldn't be, surely not? Not her sister's no-show? The man Delphie had tried to set her up with? No, it couldn't possibly . . .

'Yes, I did. It was great. Do you know the artist?'

The stranger shook his head. 'I met her sister at a party. She invited me. I'm sorry I missed it.'

So it really was him. Claudine couldn't believe it. Her stomach started doing cartwheels. Somehow she managed to speak. 'Well, you're seeing it now. That's the main thing.'

'Looks like she sold some, too,' said the man, indicating the red dots.

'They went mad.'

'You don't have to be mad to know talent like this,' he replied.

He came to the desk, turned and looked around, as though he were about to share a secret - or ask her out. It was neither.

'Is there anything, you know. . . ?' He cast around for the right words.

Claudine looked up at him, prepared herself.

'. . . Just a little less . . . expensive?'

Not what Claudine had been expecting. She could hardly speak. There's a small one. By the window. The lemons on a plate.'

He went over and looked at the painting, stood back from it, then leant forward to see the price. Which she liked, his looking at the picture first, before checking how much it cost.

'It's four thousand,' she said, the only words she could manage. As if he couldn't read.

'It's really nice.' And then: 'I'll take it.'

He came back to the desk and took a chequebook from an inside pocket. When he opened it she could read, upside down, the name - D. Jacquot. Was that what Delphie's no-show was called? She couldn't remember if her sister had mentioned a name. But she could remember how her sister had described him. And he certainly didn't look like a policeman. A cool-looking linen jacket, shiny black hair tied in a ponytail, lovely fingernails, and barefoot, just a pair of espadrilles with the jeans. He reminded her of the footballer, Ginola, the one in the coffee ad. But not so pretty. A little bit of Depardieu roughening up the mix. But very, very attractive all the same. And a lovely voice, soft and hard at the same time. And those eyes. She'd have trouble mixing a green like that, soft and shifting, translucent, like the undersides of certain leaves.

'To whom should I make it payable?' he asked, glancing up at her.

'To the artist, Claudine Eddé,' she replied.

He filled in the cheque, tore it out and handed it to her.

'Thank you, Monsieur. I'm sure you'll enjoy the painting.'

'I'm sure I will.' And then: Tell me, how long before I can pick it up?'

'If you leave your address we can send it to you. Or otherwise you could collect it when the exhibition closes.'

'Which is?'

'Friday,' she replied, knowing that she was saying all the wrong things, but unable now to do anything about it. 'We close at six.'

He nodded, gave her a smile. 'I'll come back,' he said. 'Maybe get to meet the artist, and say thanks personally.' And with that he pocketed his chequebook, nodded goodbye and left the gallery.

Leaving Claudine Eddé not a little cross with herself - that she'd played the shop-assistant and not told him who she was; and how embarrassed she'd be when he found out the truth. Which he was sure to do, when he came back to collect his painting on Friday evening.

And he hadn't even made a pass.

She wasn't sure which was worse.

For the next two hours, and despite herself, Claudine tried to recall whether or not he'd been wearing a wedding ring.

A mistake. The Waterman had made a mistake. An error of judgement, a momentary whim that came from nowhere, and the joint was hopping.

The cool, clean dispatch of Berthe Mourdet and the discovery of her body at Plage de Corbières in L'Estaque would have raised few eyebrows: just another name added to the list of Waterman kills. A beautician from Saint- Pierre. So what? There'd be a few TV news reports, some hand-wringing prose in the local papers and, from the police, the usual empty promises of renewed efforts to track down her killer. But that would be all. In other words, not much. That was how it had been in La Rochelle, in Dieppe . . . That was how it should have been here, in Marseilles.

But Berthe Mourdet had not been dispatched. Coolly, cleanly or otherwise. On a powerful, unexpected whim, she was allowed to get in her car and drive away. Just like that. Five weeks following her, getting to know her - coming up right behind her in the line for coffees and croissants at that cafe of hers on rue des Trois Rois, close enough to smell the soap on her skin. But in a single instant, the plan changed and she escaped. Lucky girl. All that work for nothing.

Except, of course, that all that preparation had led to the house in Roucas Blanc and that bewitching woman.
Dieu,
she made Berthe look like a sack of beets.

So the Waterman stayed, saw off the opposition - some pimply kid in shorts holed up in the trees to take a peep - and spent some quality time with Berthe s delightful companion. Out there on the lawn, their bodies rolling on the grass as one, and then to the pool, wading into the deep, dark water, everything they did together accompanied by the gorgeous, heart-warming bubbling of her laughter.

Great, great fun. But a very, very major mistake. Which was why the Waterman was so cross.

Unlike Berthe, the companion wasn't a beautician in Saint-Pierre and her death did not go unnoticed. According to the press, the TV and radio broadcasts, Madame de Cotigny was a very important lady - the daughter of a wealthy American family who'd flown to France in their very own private jet when they heard the news, and the wife of a leading local politician, who'd been so mortified by her death that he had taken his own life. It was a story that had been playing for two days now and it showed no signs of slowing down. This one would run and run.

It had taken the police a while to make the right connections. At first the response followed the usual pattern: a scatter of TV broadcasts, a spate of breathless editorials, and that front-page photo of a fat policeman driving out of Aqua-Cité, talking it up to the press. Not that any of this bothered the Waterman. Indeed, there was a certain satisfaction to be had in following your own investigation, watching the authorities run rings around themselves. So confident, so cocky, they were. But that was as far as they ever got. Running around in circles.

Yet suddenly here was this man, Jacquot, heading up the investigation - not the fat one any more. There'd been a photo of him in Saturdays paper and he'd appeared on a TV news bulletin, making a statement outside police headquarters. Well-set in the shoulders, with hair drawn back off his brow and tied in a ponytail, his eyes held the camera with a level, steady gaze that put a chill clean through you. He looked the kind of man who didn't like things upsetting his day. With someone like him in charge, the Waterman decided, life was definitely going to get more difficult.

Indeed, it had already started - at the Cafe-Bar Guillaume across from the gym. A few days earlier there'd been this girl who'd come in. She wasn't a regular, you could tell. The way she couldn't make up her mind where to sit - by the window, by the bar, in an alcove by the
toilettes
? Half a dozen times now she'd been there, chatting up Patrice and Nadine when they brought her another coffee, looking up from her newspaper every five seconds as though deep in thought.