The Marseille Caper

Ten

“Sam, I think I have a problem.” Philippe’s voice sounded concerned and slightly breathless. “It’s business. Can we talk?”

By now, Sam was familiar enough with Philippe’s working methods to know that one could never conduct an important conversation with him over the phone; it had to be face to face. And with Philippe, there was always a little bar somewhere. “Sure. Where do you want to meet?”

“There’s a little bar in the Rue de Bir-Hakeim, near the fish market. Le Cinq a Sept. In half an hour. Is that OK?”

True to form, Le Cinq a Sept was as Sam had come to expect from Philippe’s bars-small and seedy, with the inevitable photograph, in a place of honor behind the bar, of last year’s Marseille soccer team. A scattering of old men, saving up their stubble for the weekly shave, seemed to be the only other customers. Philippe was half hidden in a dim corner. He raised a hand in greeting. “Thanks for coming. I ordered you a pastis-it’s safer here than the wine.”

Sam topped up his glass with water as Philippe started to talk.

“An hour or so ago, I was leaving the office when this guy stepped in front of me-a little runt in a sharp suit-and asked me in English if I was Mister Davin. When I told him I was, he said this could be my lucky day. Well, you never know where the next tip-off is going to come from, so I agreed to go with him to a cafe to hear what he had to say. I’m not sure what I was expecting: some story about the English and their yachts, I thought. They often get into trouble down here. Anyway, he started off by telling me he’d seen the piece I did on the Anse des Pecheurs development, and it had really offended his client.”

“Did he say who his client was?”

“He didn’t need to. After a couple of minutes it was obvious that he was working for the Englishman Wapping.”

“How did he recognize you?”

“It’s the haircut. Remember? There’s a head shot of me at the beginning of the piece. Well, I gave him the usual stuff about the freedom of opinion in the press, and that my editor would probably be happy to give equivalent space in the paper to another point of view. He looked quite pleased with that, nodding and smiling, and then he took out an envelope. A fat envelope.” Philippe paused to take a drink.

“ ‘Exactly,’ this little con said, ‘another point of view. And you’re just the man to write it. Perhaps you might like some encouragement.’ Then he slid the envelope over to me. ‘You’ll find ten thousand euros in there,’ he said, ‘and there’s more where that came from. A nice little earner, and it’s all yours for a couple of favorable pieces. This is just between you and me, you understand. Nobody else needs to know.’ ”

“Suppose you went to the police?” said Sam.

Philippe shook his head. “And tell them what-someone tried to give me ten thousand euros? They’d tell me to get lost.”

“So what did you do?”

“I told him I didn’t take bribes. Grow up, he said. This is France-everyone takes bribes. That was when I lost it. I told him to take his envelope and shove it up his ass. I said that in French, so he probably didn’t understand it, but he would have understood the tone of my voice. And then I left. What do you think I should do?”

“What else can you do? If you don’t have any witnesses, it’s your word against his. And if he works for Wapping, you can be sure there’s a crooked lawyer around somewhere who’d swear that the meeting never happened.” Sam shook his head. “No. Try to forget about it. I don’t think he’ll risk coming back, in case you’re ready for him with a recorder in your pocket. Now, I’ve got something that might cheer you up: a little scoop. I’ve got to work out the details, but here’s the idea.”

Ray Prendergast, his mission unaccomplished, fiddled nervously with the envelope on the desk in front of him while he waited for Lord Wapping to get off the phone. His lordship didn’t take kindly to failure.

The call over, Wapping poked at the envelope with a thick index finger. “So he didn’t bite?”

“Afraid not, Billy.”

“What did he say?”

“Well, the last bit was in French, so I didn’t get all of it. But basically, he told me to piss off.”

“Silly boy. Very silly boy.” Wapping sighed, as if he’d been disappointed by the foolish behavior of a close friend. “Doesn’t leave us much option, does he? You’d better talk to Brian and Dave. Tell them to teach him a lesson. But Ray?” Wapping lowered his voice. “Nothing terminal. Know what I mean? We don’t want any complications. Tell the lads to make it look like an accident.”

There are certain men, blessed from birth, whose character and appearance inspire instant liking. Gaston Poirier was such a man: an oversized cherub with a pear-shaped body, a chubby, red-cheeked face, and a mop of curly gray hair. His brown eyes twinkled, and his mouth seemed to be permanently on the brink of a grin. Reboul had said he was the best fixer in Marseille. Sam had warmed to him at first sight.

They were sitting on the terrace, a bottle of rose between them. “I haven’t been back to this house since Francis lived here,” said Gaston. “There were some parties then, I can tell you-girls, champagne, more girls. Wonderful times.” He raised his glass. “Here’s to his new project. Tell me all about it.”

As Sam went through the background, Gaston made serious inroads on the rose, dabbing his forehead between glasses with a silk handkerchief as though he found the effort of drinking to be truly thirsty work. But he proved to be a model listener, silent and attentive, and when Sam had finished, he nodded several times, an indication that he liked what he had heard.

“The tent is a good idea,” he said. “Now we must make it work. For the tent itself, pas de soucis, no problem. But the beach is uneven, so you will need a level, solid plank floor. Also electricity. We might need a generator, but I know a guy, an artist with anything electrical, who can tap us into the city’s power grid. And then a projector, a conference table and chairs, and maybe”-here Gaston paused to waggle his eyebrows-“a nice little bar with, bien sur, a nice little barmaid. Have I forgotten anything?”

Sam knew France well enough to be extremely wary of the long arm of bureaucracy. Someone, somewhere in the city’s administrative labyrinth would have to be consulted, flattered, massaged, possibly taken out to lunch. “There is one thing,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll need a permit.”

“Oh, that.” Gaston waved a dismissive hand. “Pas de soucis. The mayor is an intelligent man. He will realize that this will be good for Marseille’s image as a dynamique city, getting ready for 2013.” Gaston winked, and tapped the side of his nose. “Besides, we go hunting together in the winter. We’re friends. Maybe you should invite him to the presentation. Anyway, I think I can promise you that we won’t have any trouble with permits. When do you want to do it?”

The next two days passed slowly for Brian and Dave, but with a pleasant undercurrent of anticipation. It had been a long time since they had been given a chance to do what they did best, which was to inflict grievous bodily harm-or, as they would describe it, putting the boot in. And as a bonus, the victim was French. Like many Englishmen of their class and generation, they were ardent chauvinists. Here was an opportunity to strike a blow for Mother England against the teeming masses of foreigners who were taking over the world, including most of England’s best soccer clubs.

They were sitting in a bar on the Vieux Port, which they had chosen because it called itself a pub, a description that, for them, held out the promise of warm beer, darts, and a large TV set permanently tuned to a snooker tournament. Unfortunately, it was a pub in name only, without even a dart board. The television was tuned to a game show, with a lot of Frogs shouting the odds, and the beer was chilled. But it would have taken more than these shortcomings to blunt their enthusiasm for the task in hand.

So far, they had spent much of the past two days shadowing Philippe and learning his routine. They had followed him in their rented van as he commuted by scooter between the offices of La Provence on the Avenue Roger Salengro and his apartment in an old building just off the Corniche, the broad road that follows the coastline. Dave found it close to ideal, an excellent spot to stage an accident. Plenty of room to maneuver, he thought, and then there was that nasty old drop from the road to the rocks below. Landing on them would slow a man down.

“Tell you what, Bri,” said Dave. “It looks like a bike job to me-one in front of him, one behind. Crash helmets, so nobody can clock our faces. No worries.” Brian nodded sagely. He always left organizational details to Dave, content to limit his own role to the more physical side of their assignments. This time, however, there was one detail that even he could see might be a problem.

“But we haven’t got any bikes.”

“We nick ’em, Bri. We nick ’em. You have a look when we get back out on the street. There’s bikes parked all over the place. Some of them even have a helmet hanging off the handlebars. Or else the helmet will be in that box behind the saddle, and my old mum could open one of those with a nail file.”

Brian nodded again. This was what he liked about working with Dave: his grasp of the fine points. By now, Brian’s beer had become warm enough to drink. As he took a cautious swallow, he thought longingly of something tasty to go with the beer-a proper English pork pie, the kind served in his favorite pub, The Mother’s Ruin, in Stepney. Of course, the Frogs didn’t understand about these things. All the rubbish they ate, it was a miracle they were able to keep body and soul together. Snails, for God’s sake. Horsemeat. He shuddered.

“So when do you reckon we should do it?”

Dave had another swig of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Best would be after work, when he goes out for his dinner. When it’s dark.”

They left the pub and walked back to the van, pausing from time to time to consider the range of bikes on display. It was as Dave had said. Bikes were everywhere-BMWs, Kawasakis, Hondas, Ducatis, even a highly polished Harley-and they had been left in places consistent with the cavalier French habit of parking wherever you please, regardless of regulations.

“We don’t want anything too flash,” said Dave. “Nothing that anyone would remember. And we’ll have to muddy up the number plates.” He ran his hand over a nearby Yamaha and patted the saddle. “Right. Here’s what we’ll do. Tonight, around two o’clock when it’s nice and quiet, we’ll nick the bikes and load ’em in the van. Tomorrow night we’ll do the job and dump the bikes. Piece of cake.”

Brian nodded. “Piece of cake, Dave.”

Philippe was working late, putting the final touches to the article he had spent the afternoon writing. His brush with Ray Prendergast still rankled, and this had caused him to be more than normally enthusiastic about Sam’s idea of putting a tent on the beach. It was, so he wrote, a breath of fresh air blowing into the murky, secretive, and often corrupt world of urban development. He went on to add to the complimentary remarks he’d already made about Sam’s project in a previous article, and finished off with a question: Would the other two projects show similar imagination, or was it going to be business as usual behind closed doors?

He leaned back in his chair, rubbed his eyes, and looked at his watch. An evening of duty lay ahead-the monthly dinner with Elodie and Raoul, Mimi’s parents. If this followed its normal course, there would be discreet questions about his career prospects and a gentle hint or two about getting rid of his scooter, buying a car, and, as Elodie always put it, “settling down.” It was a source of constant surprise to Philippe that this implacably bourgeois couple could ever have produced an unconventional daughter like Mimi. He remembered when she had dyed her hair that wonderful deep red. The parental shock-and barely concealed disapproval-had lasted for weeks. Ah, well. They were basically good, kind people, and Elodie was a magnificent cook. Philippe decided to have a shave in her honor and take her a bunch of roses.

Elena was packing. Sam had learned over the years and on many occasions that this was a sensitive ritual, never to be disturbed. Elena didn’t like to be watched when she was packing. She didn’t like to be helped. Most of all, she didn’t like to be talked to. Her relationship with her suitcase and its contents was one of mystical communion, and woe betide anyone who broke the spell. So Sam had decided to make himself scarce with a book in the living room.

Elena was off to Paris for two or three days, the result of a long and deeply apologetic phone call from her boss, Frank Knox. The Paris office was having a problem with its most important client, the CEO of a group of luxury hotels. He felt neglected, above all by the Knox head office. He felt he needed reassurance about the quality of service he was getting. He felt, in a word, unloved. Would it be possible, Frank had asked, for Elena to go up to Paris and smooth his ruffled feathers? If it seemed as though she had come all the way from Los Angeles just to have a chat with him over dinner, so much the better. In return, Frank had said, he would insist on Elena extending her vacation by an extra week. On hearing the news, Sam had been very understanding. He was going to be busy over the next few days anyway, and her return would be a good excuse to celebrate.

He got up and went over to put his ear against the bedroom door. He was just able to make out the sound of the shower coming from Elena’s bathroom, always a sure sign that the challenges of packing had been successfully overcome. He went through to the kitchen and opened a bottle of the Domaine Ott rose that Reboul had left for them. Carrying two glasses, he arrived back in the living room just as Elena, wet-haired and wrapped in a towel, came through the opposite door.

“All done?” Sam asked.

“All done.” Elena took a sip of her wine and put down her glass. “You know you said we could celebrate when I got back? Well …” She unwrapped the towel and let it drop to the floor. “How about a rehearsal?”