A Foreign Country

43

Four hours later, Kell was sitting alone at a table in Brasserie Lipp staring at a photograph of Christophe Delestre that he had culled from the pages of Facebook. In the photograph, Delestre was wearing an outsize pair of black sunglasses, cargo shorts and a burgundy T-shirt. He looked to be in his early to mid thirties, had a neatly trimmed moustache and goatee beard, with gel giving spiked life to thinning hair. The privacy settings on the account had been tight and it was the only picture of Delestre that Kell could find. On the basis that Facebook users generally gave a great deal of thought and attention to their profile picture, Kell assumed that Delestre wanted to convey an image of easygoing cool and bonhomie; he was laughing in the shot and holding a roll-up cigarette in his right hand. Nobody else was visible in the frame.

Lipp was an old-school Parisian brasserie on Boulevard Saint-Germain that had been a favourite of Claire’s when she had lived in Paris for a year as a student. She had taken Kell there twice during their marriage and they had sat side by side, at the same window table, watching the haute bourgeoisie of Paris in full flow. Little had changed. The waiters in black tie, wearing white aprons and careful smiles, prepared plates of steak tartare at a serving station just a pace from the entrance. The manager, immaculately turned out in a silk shirt and single-breasted suit, reserved his customary froideur for first-time visitors to the restaurant and an unctuous Gallic charm for more regular customers. Two tables from Kell, an elderly widow, decked out in fourteen kilos of art deco jewellery, was picking her way through a salade Niçoise, her shoulders covered by a black shawl. From time to time, the tablecloth would part to reveal a loyal Scottish terrier curled at her feet; a dog, Kell reckoned, more cherished and pampered than the late husband had ever been. Further along the same wall, beneath framed caricatures of Jacques Cousteau and Catherine Deneuve, three middle-aged women in Chanel suits were deep in conspiratorial conversation. They were too far away to be overheard, but Kell could imagine Claire, still clinging to a stereotype of the privileged French, announcing that they ‘probably have nothing better to talk about than sex and power’. He loved this place because it was the very soul of old world Paris and yet today he almost hated it, because he could only think of his estranged wife on her plane to California, sipping the same French wines and eating the same French food in a first-class seat paid for by Richard Quinn. At the Gare de Lyon, Kell had left a message on Claire’s voicemail asking her to reconsider her trip to America. She had rung back to say that she was already en route to Heathrow. There had been a note of weary triumph in her voice and Kell, gripped by jealousy, had almost dialled Elsa’s number in Italy and invited her to Paris, just to be in the company of a young woman who might soften the blow of his humiliation. Instead, he had taken a cab to Lipp, ordered himself a bottle of Nuits-St-Georges Premier Cru and buried himself in strategies for Christophe Delestre.

An hour later, the bottle finished, Kell paid his bill, crossed the street for an espresso at Café Flore, then took the metro to Pereire in the 17th arrondissement, where he knew a small, discreet hotel on Rue Verniquet. There was a double room available and he booked it under the Uniacke alias, his seventh bed in as many days. The tiny room was on the second floor and had bright orange walls, a reproduction Miró hanging beside the bathroom door and a window looking out over a small courtyard. Beginning to feel the sluggishness of a lunchtime bottle of wine, Kell did not bother to unpack, but instead went out into the late-afternoon sunshine and walked east towards Montmartre. He carried his camera with him and took a series of photographs in the blinding summer light — of café life, of wrought-iron street lamps, of fresh fruits and vegetables displayed in the windows of grocery shops — using the camera as a means of turning in the street and photographing the pedestrians and vehicles around him. Though he was sure that the DGSE, post-Marseille, had lost interest in Stephen Uniacke, a camera was a useful deterrent against mobile surveillance; later he could check faces and number plates to ascertain if certain vehicles or members of the public appeared in more than one location.

By six, he was on Rue Lamarck, a main Montmartre thoroughfare in the foothills of the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur. According to Elsa’s file, Delestre lived in a ground-floor apartment on the corner of Rue Darwin and Rue des Saules. Kell began to descend a steep flight of stone steps leading to the junction of the two streets. He paused halfway down, looking back up towards Lamarck, and fired off a sequence of photographs in the manner of an amateur photographer trying his best to capture the idiosyncratic charm of Paris. He then turned and aimed the camera at the lines of cars stretching ahead of him on both sides of Rue des Saules. Using the telephoto lens, he looked for evidence of a surveillance team. All of the vehicles appeared to be empty; as Kell suspected, no agency would have the manpower to watch each and every one of Malot’s relatives and friends. At the bottom of the steps, now only a few metres from Delestre’s front door, Kell looked up at the facing apartments on Rue Darwin and judged that it would be impossible to spot a stakeout position; he would just have to trust to the odds and take his chances. He circled the block, walking down Rue des Saules and back up Darwin from the western side. It was a busy neighbourhood, old ladies coming home from the shops, children returning from school in the company of their parents. Kell approached Delestre’s door in the hope that Christophe would now be home from work.

He heard the baby before he saw it, through an open window on the ground floor. In a small, dimly lit sitting room an attractive, dark-haired woman, perhaps of Spanish or Italian descent, was bouncing the baby up and down in her arms in an effort to stop it from crying.

‘Madame Delestre?’ Kell asked.

‘Oui?’

‘Is your husband at home?’

The woman glanced quickly to her right, then back at the stranger on the street. Christophe Delestre was in the room with her. He stood up and came to the window, standing in front of his wife and child in what may have been an unconscious instinct to protect them.

‘Can I help you?’

‘It’s about François Malot,’ Kell replied. He was speaking in French and extended a hand through the window. ‘It’s about the fire. I wondered if I could come inside?’