Дональд Джеймс - The House of Eros

Max shook his head, wondering if his mother had known any of this. ‘You’re not suggesting this had anything to do with his death?’

‘In my investigations,’ Borel tamped down his pipe, ‘I discovered, as I told you on the phone, evidence of two meetings at least between your father and Quatch.’

‘What did Quatch have to say about that?’

Borel laughed. ‘Quatch is not an easy man to deal with. Even less so when it was obvious that he was about to become a senior figure in a united, triumphant Vietnam.’

‘What did he tell you?’

‘He told me Peter Benning had fallen in love with Bernadette Hyn. That he had gone to her apartment and thrust a dagger into his breast. I don’t think he cared much whether I believed it or not.’

‘Could it have been suicide?’

‘Possible, but unlikely. I’ll spare you the gruesome details.’

‘So what did happen?’

‘Quatch killed him. Or had him killed.’

‘Why?’

‘Ah, that I don’t know.’

‘Do you have any guesses?’

Borel stopped to light his pipe. Expelling puffs like gunsmoke he glanced up at a bruised purple cloud moving from the direction of the Boulevard Malesherbes. ‘I think Quatch was more than just a representative of Hanoi,’ he said. ‘I think he had a business sideline.’

‘Antiquities?’

Borel nodded. ‘Smuggled ivory statuary, manuscripts, objets d’art . Your father caught up with him in Paris and Quatch put someone on to kill him. I don’t think it’s a very complicated story. The complications began when, about a week after your father was killed, the Communists were victorious in Vietnam. Quatch became charge d’affaires here in Paris and the Quai d’Orsay told me not to upset a representative of the new Vietnamese government.’

‘You gave up the case?’

‘With Monsieur Quatch about to be the next ambassador to tread the purple carpet, I had no choice… I was in any case offered an excellent promotion.’

‘Which you accepted.’

‘Without a trace of shame, Monsieur Benning.’ Heavy drops of rain began to speckle the dry gravel in front of them. Borel dragged from his inside pocket a tam-o’-shanter in a Royal Stewart plaid. He put it on, carefully adjusting it round the line of his tonsure. ‘What do you think?’ He touched the peak and cocked his head in a Maurice Chevalier gesture.

‘Ridiculous,’ Max said.

‘You’re an honest man, monsieur,’ Borel laughed. ‘That’s enough walking for one morning. It’s almost lunchtime. My liver craves the bonhomie of a little bar I know just through the gates. There.’ He pointed.

A clock somewhere across the river rang midnight. Across the Seine from the lie St Louis, Paris pulsated with the sounds of traffic and music and people. In front of him the Hotel Kandler was dark but for a small lamp burning somewhere deep in the lobby. Max stopped outside, searching his pockets for the front door keys the patronne had given him.

He was surprised at the acuteness of his own disappointment. Nan Luc had not turned up at the cafe where they had arranged to meet. He had waited for almost two hours, drinking his way through half a dozen pastis and a day-by-day account by the barman of this year’s Tour de France.

‘Do the Vietnamese embassy staff ever come in here?’ Max had asked him cautiously.

‘Seldom,’ the barman said. ‘And then I think only senior members perhaps.’ His lower lip turned down in a grimace.

‘You’re happy enough they stay away?’

‘I was a conscript in Indo-China in the fifties. Myself and half a million other Frenchmen. They’re a hard people. More than dedicated. Suicidal. I could have told the Americans who came after us.’

From the cafe Max had gone to the Chateau de la Muette. He was pretty certain she had not attended the Aid Policy lecture. Waiting outside the iron gates as the lecture ended he watched the Third World delegates leave the building. She was not among them.

He had gone back to the Avenue Boilleau, to the Vietnamese embassy. Through the padlocked gate he had stared at the infinitely depressing combination of a pagoda roof style and a white tiled fifties facade. There were no lights visible behind the shuttered windows, no light in the oriental portico.

He had returned to the cafe, ordered another pastis and sat for another hopeless half-hour. The barman told him stories of what life had been like in Saigon while Max drank and wondered how real it was, his certainty that he would never see her again. Not real at all, of course. Just an acute reflection of the ache he felt to see her enter the bar and cross towards him.

‘I’m sorry your girl never turned up,’ the barman said. Max lifted an eyebrow in surprise. ‘The Vietnamese girl you were here with in the garden yesterday.’

‘You remember.’

‘Not easy to forget. I had a Vietnamese girl when I was there. She came from a village in the Mekong Delta. Nice people. Peasants and a bit more. Not just a service romance.’ He poured himself a pastis. ‘She was pregnant when I last saw her.’

‘What happened?’ Max asked him.

‘What always happens. The winds of war.’

‘Just like that. You never saw her again?’

‘I was posted north. Took some shrapnel in the leg. The Army shipped me back to France.’

‘What happened to the girl?’

The barman shrugged. ‘I still sometimes think about her. They never give up, the Vietnamese. Whatever it is, waiting, fighting, hating. Maybe even loving too.’ He finished his pastis and drew a sharp breath through his nose. ‘If ever… whenever…’

‘What’s that?’ Max said. It seemed to echo a phrase Nan Luc had used.

‘They say it a lot out there. The women especially. If ever it happens… whenever it happens…’

‘What is it?’ Max said. ‘Resignation?’

‘Not the Vietnamese.’ The Frenchman shook his head. ‘They make things happen. I could have told the Americans that, too.’ Max bought the barman another pastis and bade him goodnight. The Frenchman lifted his glass as Max put a handful of francs on the bar. ‘Sorry about the girl,’ he said. ‘One thing you can be sure of. She didn’t just forget.’

Back in the lobby of the Hotel Kandler a shadow moved through the darkness of the breakfast room. From the shuffle of her espadrilles he recognised the patronne.

‘I hope I haven’t kept you up, mademoiselle,’ Max said.

She shook her head. ‘I have a message for you, Monsieur Benning. A young woman named Nan Luc telephoned. She says she regrets she will not be able to continue work on your case. She is no longer at the embassy. She was called home to Vietnam this afternoon.’

Bernadette Hyn seethed with anger. ‘Make sure you understand, Nan Luc. Nobody has given you nine lives. The moment Benning’s son came to the embassy you should have cabled me cipher here in Saigon.’ Bernadette swerved the Citroen round a clutch of cyclists, blasted her horn and accelerated down the road from the airport to Ho Chi Minh City. ‘I warn you,’ Bernadette hissed. ‘Monsieur Quatch is not in a forgiving mood.’

Nan Luc kept her eyes on the road ahead. ‘When the reception clerks read the list of enquiries Max Benning presented,’ she said evenly, ‘they brought them straight to me. I had no reason to know you didn’t want me to deal with the matter.’

‘He should have been turned away. Common sense should have told you that you were not in Paris to supply information to an American journalist.’

‘Who was Peter Benning?’ Nan Luc said. ‘Why was he killed? I think his son has the right to know these things.’

‘The matter’s closed.’ Bernadette threw her a look of savage fury. ‘Open it again at your peril.’ She brought the car to a squealing halt as the head of a long column of students began to pass across their front.