Michael Pearce - A dead man in Tangier

‘Ah, Monsieur, you are too kind! But you are right. For me, the human touch is all. It is not so with everybody, but for me, for me it comes first. We must not lose sight of the pain in the one who has suffered. And we must do what we can to alleviate it.’

‘Just so! A man dies, and it is our job as policemen to find out who has killed him. But we must remember, too, the ones he leaves behind. The man dies and so often the woman is left alone. It is then that support is needed and, thank goodness, it is exactly that you are providing for Madame Bossu.’

‘Poor Juliette!’

‘She should be grateful. And I’m sure she will be. It may take a little time to show-’

‘She doesn’t realize all the work I am doing for her.’

‘Oh, she will, she will.’

‘You think so?’ said Renaud, pleased.

‘I am sure of it. And when she does, I am sure she will be truly grateful.’

‘Well, well, that would be nice. All I want, you know, is a little appreciation.’

‘And, perhaps, some time later, as she begins to recover from this terrible experience, something more? A man is a man, after all.’

‘Well, yes, there is that,’ said Renaud, smiling.

‘Well, I wish you success! But, meanwhile there is work to be done. And a lot of it. No one knows that better than I do. Bossu was a man of so many interests. With those, there is always much to sort out.’

‘There is, there is!’

‘Business interests, too. Complex ones. That makes it particularly difficult.’

‘It does. It does.’

‘Especially as he seems to have had business interests everywhere.’

‘That is what I keep saying to Juliette. It’s not as if his affairs were confined to Tangier, I say.’

‘The business trips alone-’

‘Exactly! “I have a job,” I say to Juliette. “I can’t be always going off to places like Marrakesh. I have responsibilities here.” But she does not understand!’

‘Ah, women!’

‘Exactly, Monsieur: women!’

‘But perhaps I can help?’

‘Help?’ said Renaud, disconcerted.

‘Over the business trips at least. I have some information on them.’

‘You do?’

‘Dates, for instance.’

‘Dates?’

‘And places.’

‘Places?’

‘And sums. Do you have sums?’

‘Well…’

‘Perhaps we could compare notes. You show me your information and I’ll show you mine. I gather you have his papers?’

‘Some, yes. Well, most-’

‘Then we could go through them together.’

‘Um, ah — They are not — not all to hand.’

‘You do have them still?’

‘Oh, yes. But — some are still to be sorted.’

‘We can do that together.’

‘Um. Ah. Yes.’

Renaud pulled himself together.

‘But before I could do that, I would have to… They are Juliette’s papers, after all. Private papers. Yes, that’s it. Private papers. I feel I ought not to

‘Naturally, I would not wish to pry into Madame Bossu’s private papers. But Bossu’s papers… Surely Bossu’s papers are within the scope of the public investigation?’

‘Um. Ah. Yes. But..

Seymour could see that he was not going to let Seymour anywhere near them.

That evening he went to see Monique.

‘Well, this is a pleasure,’ she said.

Her apartment was tucked away from the sea front but close enough to it and high up enough for him to be able to see the sea. She took him out on to a little balcony which overlooked the bay. It was dark now and the harbour was alive with lights. From the cheap Arab cafes over to their left came the throbbing and wailing of Arab music. They sat down.

‘Well, now,’ she said, ‘I am not so foolish as to imagine that this is just a social call. How can I help you?’

‘I am sorry to trouble you over something so small. But I can see no other way of finding out. It is just a very simple question.’

‘Simple?’ she said. Her eyebrows went up. ‘But in Tangier no questions are simple. Because they nearly always lead to difficult answers.’

‘This one won’t,’ said Seymour. ‘It is just to ask you if you know the name of the bank Bossu used. And I wouldn’t have troubled you if I had been able to get anything sensible out of Juliette.’

‘Thousands have tried before you! But I do see that that is the kind of mundane detail that might have escaped her notice.’

‘I had hoped, actually, that it might be in Bossu’s papers. But Renaud had taken them all away.’

Monique was amused.

‘So he’s not so stupid!’ She thought. ‘Actually he’s not stupid at all. He can be quite cunning at times. When it’s in his interests.’

‘So I come to you.’

‘It’s easy.’

She wrote the name down on a slip of paper. It was the name of the bank in which the committee had its offices.

‘That all? Really? Well, I’m not going to let you get away with that. At least you must have a drink.’

Seymour found himself staying rather longer than he had intended.

‘So how did you get on with Monique?’ asked the receptionist when he came down the next morning.

He stopped.

‘You know?’

‘Of course.’

‘How?’

‘Someone saw you. And then came back and told me.’

‘Why did they come back and tell you?’

‘Cash. I like to know these things.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought this was worth paying for.’

‘I didn’t pay very much.’

‘Still…’

‘You have to cast your bread upon the waters if you’re a journalist. Usually it leads to nothing. But occasionally there is a return.’

‘Is this for your newspaper?’

‘My newspaper would certainly pay for information. If it was worth printing.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought this was.’

‘I don’t think so, either,’ she agreed. ‘Still, I didn’t know that until after I had paid. It was only a few coins. My informant was a small boy and he brings information rather indiscriminately.’

Seymour laughed.

‘Do you use a lot of boys?’ he asked.

‘I find them useful. And girls, too, but they don’t get around so much.’

‘Do you know a lame beggar boy?’

‘I know several lame beggar boys.’

‘Something wrong with his hip.’

She thought for a moment.

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Because this one may have seen what happened to Bossu. He was lying in the scrub when Bossu rode in after a pig.’

‘It may be Salah,’ she said. ‘He lives over in that direction and is just the sort of boy who would want to follow the pig-sticking.’

‘Where would I find him?’

‘You could try the Mosque Al-Baylim. He sleeps there and they give him food.’

‘Thank you.’

‘If you find out anything,’ she said, ‘tell me.’

He nodded.

She came to the door with him. As she opened it she saw Mustapha and Idris outside.

‘Are they coming with you?’

Seymour sighed.

‘Almost certainly.’

‘Go easy with them today. It’s Ramadan and they don’t eat until after sunset. What with that and the heat, people get very exhausted. By the time they’d finished yesterday they were really knocked up.’

‘Look, they don’t have to come with me.’

‘Oh, but they do. It’s a question of honour.’

She went across to them and spoke to them. Then she came back.

‘I’ve told them which mosque it is,’ she said. ‘You’ll find Salah asleep in the porch if you go there about noon.’

The Mosque Al-Baylim was on the poor edge of Tangier, where the cheap, flat-roofed houses with tomatoes and onions spread out to dry on the top gave way to the poorer kind of workshops: potteries, consisting of trenches where the potters sat outside on planks and worked their wheels with their bare feet, tanners, where bare-chested men dipped skins into huge vats, underground flour mills in dark cellars where great wheels were driven by subterranean streams, oil presses where the ground around was damp and discoloured and the air was heavy with the sticky, slightly sugary smell of pressed sesame seed.