Читать книгу The Dave Bliss Quintet - James Hawkins - Страница 6

“Am I interrupting? What are you writing?” The blade of a dagger sliced between her ribs, nicking her bikini strap. A pair of perfectly moulded breasts perked upwards in momentary relief, her back arched in agony, then she slumped to the sand with her attacker’s name on her lips.

“Sorry,” he says, glancing up at the slender woman silhouetted against the Mediterranean sun, her plentiful breasts still safely clasped in her bikini’s hold.

“I asked you what you were writing,” she repeats, sliding closer to him along on the seawall while casually dusting sand from her naked feet.

“A novel,” he answers, pumping himself up, getting a lift from the words. Nothing wimpish — not a short story or a newspaper article. Nothing egotistical, either — like poetry or memoirs. “A novel,” he repeats, immediately realizing the allure the simple phrase could have.

“Can I read it?” she asks.

That’s allure, he thinks, saying, “No. Sorry, it’s not finished yet.” And, folding his journal with emphasis, he gazes out over the blue bay, seemingly seeking inspiration.

“Pardonnez-moi,” she mumbles, edging away, then pauses quizzically. “Are you known? I mean … famous, perhaps. Should I recognize you?” Her narrowed, questioning eyes corner him.

“Dave,” he says, tentatively extending a hand, peering into her eyes with the slowly developing realization that she may be the one he is seeking.

“Dave?” she queries, then hesitates. And …? her eyes demand. Do I have to ask? Do you expect me to drag it out of you? Maybe your mother stitched it to your underpants — should I look? “Dave?” she queries again.

“Dave …” He wavers, still undecided. “Dave Burbeck.” Shit! he thinks, why did I say that? Maybe because that poster over there says: “Festival de Jazz de la Côte d’Azur — avec Dave Brubeck.”

With a curious eye on the poster she inches closer to him. “Not …?”

“Oh, good Lord … no. Not Brubeck,” he replies a touch hastily. “It’s Burbeck, Dave Burbeck.”

Now she eyes him skeptically and queries, “Burbeck?” as she checks out the poster again. “Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?”

Bugger — I’ve only just started and she’s blown my cover already.

“I said,” she continues, like a poodle with a bone, “it’s a bit of a coincidence — Brubeck; Burbeck.”

“Sorry,” Detective Inspector David Bliss of London’s Metropolitan Police replies, hoping to move on. “I was miles away … thinking of the next line for my book.”

“It must be very exciting being a writer,” she says, putting on her high beams in admiration and letting go of the bone. “What’s it about?”

“Life.”

“Romance?” she queries with a mischievous smirk.

“Death.”

“Oh,” she shudders, “I’m not keen on death.”

“I’m not sure many people are.”

“I’m Marcia, by the way,” she says, finally reciprocating and offering a hand, deliberately holding back her surname, waiting for him to be straight with her.

“Dave Burbeck,” he starts, still holding her hand, still wondering how to break the ice. “Oh. You know that already.”

“Yes,” she says, critically eyeing the poster on the billboard. “That is what you told me.” Then, catching Bliss by surprise, she jumps onto the sand and strides off along the beach towards the centre of St-Juan-sur-Mer. “See you again, Mr. Brubeck,” she calls over her shoulder with a knowing lilt in her voice.

“It’s Burbeck,” he calls after her, adding, “Wait, I need to talk to you.” But she doesn’t.

“Nice looking woman; could she be the one?” he muses, watching as she heads towards the centre of town. “Who would want to stick a knife in her?” And he picks up his pad and starts again.

A gunshot rang out …

“I think I’ve made contact,” Bliss says a few hours later, telephoning his office in London from a pay phone a few miles along the coast, in the ancient Provençal port of Antibes, strictly according to his handler’s instructions. (“Christ, that’s taking it a bit far,” he said originally. “Can’t be too careful, Dave,” the senior officer insisted.)

“You think you’ve made contact,” his handler queries now, impatience adding a critical edge. “Didn’t she ID herself positively — give the code word?”

“Not exactly, Guv, though I didn’t expect her to immediately. She’ll probably be a bit cagey for awhile … want to check me out. She’s probably got a lot at stake.” He pauses, thinking: Her neck, probably. “But she’s English, thirty-five-ish, short black hair, mouthwatering breasts, eyes like pools of liquid ebony …”

“What the hell?” exclaims the voice on the phone.

“Oh. Sorry, Guv. I got carried away. Anyway, she obviously made a beeline for me when no one else was about. The beach was almost deserted — everyone still sleeping it off or jostling for a croissant and chocolat chaud. The bloody beaches are packed by nine in the morning, and Noel Coward was wrong — mad dogs and Englishmen aren’t the only ones baking in the midday sun — and no one leaves ’til five.”

“Hardly a day in the office, though,” snorts the sarcastic voice at the other end with the weariness of a wet Thursday in London.

“Tougher, if you ask me. Have you any idea what it’s like to be a professional sunbather?”

“Stop whining. You’re getting paid. By the way, what’s your cover?”

Bliss tells him, and the phone explodes. “Dave Burbeck!” yells his contact.

“I know what you’re thinking, Guv. But the name just slipped out. Anyway, it matches my initials. Dave Bliss, Dave Burbeck.”

“Detective Inspector Bliss,” starts the voice, a mixture of officialdom and royally pissed-offedness. “You’ve had two weeks swanning about on the poxin’ beach in the South of France to come up with a plausible cover, and the best you do is a bleedin’ rock star.”

“Jazz, actually. But it’s Burbeck, not Brubeck.”

“Don’t push it, Bliss. So what bloody creative occupation did you conjure up for Mr. Burbeck? Astronaut, perhaps?”

“I’m an author, working on my first novel — a historical mystery.”

The line goes silent while his contact thinks for a few seconds. “That’s actually a bloody good cover,” he says, taking his hand off the mouthpiece, Bliss’s inappropriate choice of name temporarily forgotten or forgiven. “But what about the informant?” The crustiness is back. “Where is she? Who is she? Why the bloody hell did you let her go?”

Leaving the pay phone, nestled coolly under a fruitladen fig tree in the shade of the stone ramparts of the fifteenth-century fortifications, Bliss flinches under the stark glare of the midday sun and scuttles into the shade of a clump of eucalyptus trees edging a dustbowl. A group of serious-faced pétanque players momentarily take their eyes off their boules and critically inspect him as he flops onto a convenient bench, flicks away a hostile wasp, opens his writing pad, scrubs out his previous words, and begins again.

The pink and white blossoms of oleanders, together with the trumpets of hibiscus, paint the hedgerows and scent the air with a sweetness that transcends the derision and bitterness of everyday existence.

The pétanque players pick up where they left off, like a small grazing herd that was only momentarily alarmed by the presence of a predator. Typically French, thinks Bliss, perplexed by the indifference of the seemingly earnest players as their boules ricochet off stray pebbles on the bumpy ground and veer off course. Why don’t they play on a proper court? he wonders, his desire for competitive precision honed on the billiard-table bowling greens and fiercely rolled cricket pitches of England, and his mind leads him home and to the reason for his presence on the Côte d’Azur.

“We want you to take it easy for awhile, Inspector,” Commander Richards, his contact, declared a few weeks earlier, immediately raising Bliss’s suspicions. Richards was a stranger. An admin man from headquarters with half-rimmed reading glasses, a no-nonsense moustache, and a seriously sympathetic mien. He had been brought in for the occasion, Bliss assumed. Bad news, like a solicitation for a charitable donation, was always easier delivered by, and received from, a stranger, and Bliss saw through the ploy, and the words, immediately. Take it easy permanently, the commander meant, hoping Bliss might take the hint.

“You probably need a bit of help from the trickcyclist after what you’ve been through,” he suggested, and Bliss knew what that meant as well. Seeking help from a psychiatrist was an easy route to an untimely discharge, his record of service indelibly embossed “Unfit for duty.” Funny that, he thought. Get a bullet in the leg in the line of duty and the force can’t do enough for you … but a wounded brain can be more damning than bubonic plague.

“Have a stiff drink, old chap. Do you a world of good,” was about all the sympathy you might expect following a traumatic event — and Bliss had certainly suffered that. Of course, he might wangle a spell of light duties — as if regular police work were particularly heavy — frittering away a few months, even years, flying a desk at New Scotland Yard, churning out irksome directives with Richards and the rest of the sore backside brigade, muttering: “My life’s bloody boring; why should you be enjoying yourself?” Or quit. Wasn’t that what they really wanted? A tasty pension was being dangled — his twenty-two years of service would be rounded up to thirty, and they’d throw in a disability bonus — then he could follow the common path down to a little country pub where he would enthrall his patrons with wildly exaggerated tales of heroic adventures. Not likely, he’d decided unhesitatingly, perplexed by coppers who’d spent half their careers chucking inebriates out of pubs, and their retirements dragging them back in. There was, in any case, a more selfserving reason for him not to ride off quietly into the sunset: retribution. He still had a score to settle. However, there was an alternative on the table: a covert assignment on the French Riviera under the guise of protracted convalescent leave.

“This is absolutely hush-hush,” Richards whispered, leaning menacingly across his desk, his tone as sharp as his moustache. “Not a word to anyone — understand?”

Bliss recoiled into his chair, ducking a waft of whisky-laden breath, and Richards took it as a rejection. “It’s OK, Inspector,” he said, relaxing. “I quite understand. I don’t suppose you want another foreign assignment just yet.”

“It wasn’t an assignment ...” Bliss started, then tried to let it drop, knowing he was still under a cloud for attacking his senior officer and then flying halfway around the world in pursuit of a multiple murderer on his own initiative. The fact that the officer, Superintendent Edwards, had been promoted while facing disciplinary charges arising from the incident gave Bliss a fairly good idea of the direction of the wind.

“It’s entirely up to you,” Richards said with an encouraging half-smile, “but I would have thought a few months in the South of France, full pay plus all expenses — and I mean all expenses — would get you back on track.”

“Have you any idea …?” Bliss scoffed, knowing the usual stinginess of the force.

But Richards knew the cost. “It’s an important case, Inspector. The sky’s pretty much the limit.”

If this was an olive branch, it was hung with juicy fruit. Or would it turn out to be just a carrot to lure him out of the way while a certain senior officer was given a slap on the wrist?

“I can’t,” Bliss replied, easing himself forward. “I’m a witness against Edwards. He nearly got me killed trying to cover his backside.”

“Chief Superintendent Edwards to you,” Richards admonished, his tone immediately souring. “Innocent until proved guilty, Inspector, as I’m sure you’re aware. And you needn’t worry — you’ll be notified of the disciplinary hearing in plenty of time to return.”

“Your mission,” Richards told him, “is simply to locate this person, positively identify him, and report his whereabouts.”

The apparent simplicity of the task left Bliss skeptical. They didn’t need an inspector for this. A grunt with six months’ service could do this — even a civvy could do it — at a fraction of the cost.

“Is that it?” he asked, certain he was being sidelined.

“That’s it, Inspector. In fact, you are specifically ordered not to take it further. This is very delicate, as I’m sure you appreciate.”

Bliss nodded appropriately, none the wiser.

“Precipitous action on your part could prove fatal,” Richards continued, his face saying he was well aware of Bliss’s proclivity for taking matters into his own hands when he believed the situation demanded it.

But what about me? wondered Bliss. Could it prove fatal to me as well? He didn’t ask, suspecting the unreliability of any possible answer.

“Just find him, and enjoy yourself while you’re at it,” Richards concluded, asking, “Is that a problem?”

“What’s he wanted for?” Bliss asked, but the senior officer’s blank expression and vague explanation left him hanging.

“Worldwide crackdown on the big boys. Someone upstairs pissed off with prisons full of petty criminals when the real villains are laughing all the way to the Caribbean and the Côtes du filthy rich.”

“Don’t we have special people for this?” asked Bliss.

“Yeah — you.”

“Give me a break, Guv. You need someone who can mingle with the hoi polloi. Why not pick someone with an aristocratic background?”

“Yeah — like they’re lining up to join the force, Dave. I can just see it: Lord Fotheringale hyphen Smythe the poxing third turning up at training school in a Ferrari, with his butler, valet, and personal chef dragging behind in a Range Rover.”

“I knew a cop who had a Ferrari once.”

“I remember his case,” Richards said. “Didn’t he go down for three years for extortion? Wasn’t he rolling over pimps for twenty percent of their takings and showing the new girls the ropes?”

“That’s him,” Bliss laughed, “but what about MI5, or whatever they call themselves these days?”

“Not their bag. This has nothing to do with national security. This guy’s just a crook.”

“Interpol then?”

“Waste of time, unless we know for sure where he is.”

The heady scent of oleanders, writes Bliss, restarting his journal as he strolls around the bay towards the lighthouse that dominates the town from its lofty outcrop, and the bouquet of mimosa and hibiscus fills the motionless parched air, already laden with the perfume of lavender and rosemary, and sweetens the stench of decaying seaweed and overburdened sewers.

He pauses, scrubs out the whole lot, and starts again. Oleanders, he writes, stops, and slams the book shut — his concentration sabotaged by the heat, the beauty, and a degree of apprehension. Worrisome thoughts of Chief Superintendent Edwards weigh him down as he struggles up the Chemin du Calvaire towards the Cap D’Antibes lighthouse. Rough stone steps, grooved by the feet of pilgrims since 981, according to the sign, lead him past the Stations of the Cross let into wayside niches, and he tags onto a group of straight-faced novitiates under the tutelage of a wimpled nun. They may be following the footsteps of a millennium of Christians, but he can’t help feeling they’ve been led to the Côte d’Azur as a warning against the sins of the flesh.

“Christ is condemned to die,” he translates, using the bas-relief carving as a guide at the first of the tableaux. The figures of Pontius Pilate’s court, assembled to pronounce the verdict with Judas skulking in the wings, are carved into the background, with the thorncrowned head of Christ taking centre stage. Turning away, he smiles at the ironic thought that were it today, Chief Superintendent Edwards would undoubtedly be the one in the middle with the toga and laurel wreath.

The walk back to his apartment should only take fifteen minutes along the narrow laneways fringed with oleander, mimosa, and grapevines, but his eyes and mind wander to the barely covered nymphs sashaying to and from the beach. Where are all the fat women? he is wondering, when a couple of grandes dames, with two hours of makeup and more glitz than a mirror ball, light up as they hobble by on four-inch stilettos. Their string thongs bite deeply into flabby behinds. He returns their smiles — just for a second. Oh, their agony and their ecstasy.

The afternoon drips by as he soaks up the sun on the apartment’s balcony.

Bollocks to Richards and the lot of them, he thinks to himself. Why should I put myself out? I think I’ll just stay here and write my book. It might even turn out to be a best-seller — Six months in Provence, or something similar.

Seeking inspiration, he peers over the balcony. Fifty feet below, a lemon tree straddles an unmarked fence line between the garden of the ground-floor apartment and the park beyond. Ripe lemons dot the tree like Christmas decorations, and he watches as one, fatigued by the heat, lets go of its branch and falls to the grass.

“Wow!” He laughs, startled by the synchronicity of the event, feeling that, in some way, he had been drawn to watch — as if the lemon were a gift to him. It is a Hollywood moment, he decides — lights, cameras … action! — but isn’t everything here a movie set?

The lemon, starkly yellow in the bright afternoon sun, shines like a beacon, and, pulling on shorts, he plops a fresh ice cube into his Perrier and heads for the elevator.

The click of a door latch catches his attention as he emerges on the ground floor. He spins — too late, the door has closed, but he knows which one — and stands in frustration as he feels the stare of the occupant through the spyhole. Now what? he wonders, knowing the apartment is the one that backs onto the garden bordered by the lemon tree. Returning to the elevator in disappointment, he is struck by a feeling of déjà vu and casts his mind over similar occasions during the previous week. The same door latch had clicked more than once. The same eye had spied.

“Weird,” he mumbles, sloughs off the temptation to squint through the spyhole, and takes the stairs up to his apartment, the climb giving him thinking time.

I’ll phone Samantha, he thinks, realizing he hasn’t spoken to his daughter since a brief call from the airport in Nice to report a terror-free flight. And tell her what? There’s a lemon on the grass and I want to pick it up.

What did Richards say? “No personal calls, Dave.” Though he pulled back at the sight of concern on Bliss’s face. “Except in emergencies, of course.”

This is an emergency, Bliss lies to himself, and calls.

Listening to the brrring of her phone, he works out how long it has been since he spoke to her. Two weeks, he realizes. What to tell?

I’m writing a book.

Great — what’s it about?

OK. Better not mention the book, but what else? Two weeks walking the streets and quays clutching a photograph of the wanted man. But what was he wanted for? Who wanted him? What would happen to him?

Two weeks and absolutely nothing has happened — apart from the woman on the beach this morning, and the lemon falling — hardly notable. Though maybe it is some sort of portent, signalling the start — but of what?

Samantha’s recorded voice breaks into his thoughts and invites him to leave a message. He puts the phone down. What could he have said? Love you — miss you.

And what would she think?

OK, so I’m a bit lonely. Lonely and bored, he admits to himself, wondering why he hadn’t given her his cellphone or apartment number for a return call. He would have to talk to her soon, though. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know where he was or what he was doing.

“This could take months, even years,” he explained to her before leaving, despite Richards’s admonition that he shouldn’t tell anyone. Samantha wasn’t just “anyone,” and a disquieting internal voice urged him to make sure someone knew — another reason he didn’t want her to call. Just in case they, whoever they were, had tapped the phone at either of their apartments.

“They are asking me to live in the South of France, all expenses paid, for gawd knows how long, just to catch one villain,” he told her as they meandered along the back lanes of the South Downs.

“Dad. Where’s this leading?” Samantha asked, puzzled by a church that appeared to be identical to one she’d seen ten minutes earlier.

“I’m not sure,” he replied, missing her point, preoccupied with thoughts of Edwards and Richards. “That’s the problem. I can’t decide if this is a put-up job just to get me out of the way —”

“No, I meant where does this road go?” she cut in. “I thought you were taking me to lunch, not on an expedition to the farthest flung corner of the British Empire.”

“This is Kent,” he started, then caught on. “Oh. I see what you mean.”

A mock-Tudor pub appeared around the bend ahead, and Bliss gave the impression he’d been aiming for it all along as he swung into the parking lot. Minutes later, they were at the bar, waiting for their table.

“Drugs,” suggested Samantha, sipping her gin and tonic.

“No thanks,” he joked.

“Be serious, Dad. You know what I mean.”

It was the obvious conclusion, though it offered no explanation for the secrecy. The faces of drug barons regularly filled the pages of The Police Gazette.

“Is it common to be given a assignment without being given the reasons?” Samantha enquired.

The correct answer would have been: “Yes, if there’s a risk someone will tip off the target.” Although that answer left him questioning what the hierarchy really thought of him. “All they told me was that he’s a really big fish,” he said, skirting the question.

“Well,” she laughed, “the Med’s only a small pond. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find him.”

“It’s still a bit fishy,” Bliss said, making her laugh again.

“What do you know about him?” Samantha enquired, switching on her courtroom voice.

“Not a lot,” he confessed, though he was reluctant to admit Richards had fobbed him off with a “need-to-know basis” excuse. “I’ve got a photo and a description, and I’m supposed to get the rest from an informant when I get there.”

“Informant?”

He nodded, a handful of peanuts poised. “Someone tipped off the Yard to his location — possibly his wife. Apparently he did a bunk with a bimbo.”

“Hell hath no fury ...” Samantha started, and then urged him to take the case as she screwed up her nose at the dog-eared menu. “It sounds like a doddle to me. Can I come and visit? The food there is fabulous.”

“Might have known you had an ulterior motive. The trouble is that people have a habit of getting killed when I get involved.”

“And you blame yourself?” she asked, her voice lifting in surprise.

“No,” he began, though he was beginning to wonder.

During Bliss’s evening promenade, which has become a daily ritual, he checks out the quayside restaurants and packed bars of St-Juan-sur-Mer, Johnson’s photograph tucked inside his writing pad. Two weeks’ eyestrain has left everyone looking pretty much the same, and every day he’s spotted at least one dead cert whom he has eliminated one way or another, but he still searches diligently, and still waits for the informant to leap out of the shadows and announce herself with the codeword.

The ancient port and faded resort of St-Juan-sur-Mer, squeezed out of the travel brochures by the pushy hoteliers of Cannes and Nice, has kept a grip on its narrow beach and clientele of loyal tourists only by fighting off the invasion of casinos, nightclubs, and amusement arcades that have swamped its neighbours. The one concession to modernity lies at the foot of the main street, where once upon a time Napoleon, escaping from exile on Elba, landed to form an army. Now a modern marina, with cosmopolitan quayside restaurants and bars, accommodates the overflow of yachts escaping from the snobbery of the long-established harbours that dot the coast.

The bar L’Escale is one of the old brigade, with its smoke-stained ceiling, twenty-year-old Pernod posters, and a flickering 1960s neon sign. It still stands sentinel over the old port, although it is cut off from the wide promenade — and its customers, sheltering under shady plane trees and parasols — by the racetrack of the coast road. What’s the life expectancy of a staff member? wonders Bliss, watching the slender, olive-skinned waitress zigzagging between speeding cars, buses, and motorbikes as she spies him approaching his regular table.

“Vin rouge,” he orders with a smile as he pulls up his chair.

“Vous parlez français comme une vache espagnole,” laughs Jacques, the table’s other occupant, as Angeline, the waitress, streaks back across the roadway to fetch his drink from the bar.

Why would Spanish cows speak French? Bliss wonders, but doesn’t ask for fear of further exposing his linguistic shortcomings as he greets the weathertanned Frenchman.

“Bonsoir, Jacques, you smooth talker. Are you well? Ça va?” asks Bliss.

“Oui. I am absolutely perfect,” responds Jacques, but then his face falls as he casts a jaundiced eye out over the sea, complaining, “But zhe fishing … merde!”

“No sardines today then, I guess,” says Bliss in English, mindful that while his ability to speak French may get him a decent meal and a good bed for the night, it doesn’t stretch very much further — a point that came into question during his briefing by Commander Richards.

“You do speak the language, don’t you?” the officer asked, and while the words “not much” might have got him off the case, his service record lay open in front of Richards. The answer was there — he’d put it down as an attribute when applying for promotion to inspector, never thinking anyone would ask for proof or expect a conversation — and this was not the time to give anyone a reason to call him a liar.

Angeline rushes the traffic with the determination of a frog heading for spawning grounds and delivers Bliss’s wine as two couples swoop on a nearby table and vie for seats overlooking the harbour. The men win; the women’s faces fall; the men relent; the women smile — everybody feels victorious.

“Zhey are Engleesh,” says Jacques, nodding to the newcomers as he lights a cigarette. “Zhe anorak brigade,” he adds with a sneer, and his words sink home with Bliss as they tuck plastic raincoats and rolled umbrellas under their seats, while pulling sweaters and jackets tight against the balmy night air.

“Warm evening,” Bliss calls to break the ice.

“Too bloody hot if you ask me,” answers one, taking a handkerchief from his jacket pocket to dab his forehead.

War babies, thinks Bliss, putting them in their late fifties or early sixties, and he wanders over to introduce himself.

“Hugh Mason and my landlubbers, Mavis, John, and Jennifer,” pronounces Hugh, the sweaty one, the fit of his navy blazer marking him as a man whose seafaring experience has been largely honed in the bar of the Admiral Nelson or Rover’s Return. Bliss is still wondering how long it has been since he was able to button it up when Jennifer pipes up and asks his name.

“Dave Burbeck, author,” he responds.

“Ooh, what d’ye write?” she gushes.

“Books,” he begins, but the start of a frown warns him against humour. “I’m working on a historical mystery,” he continues.

“The old skulduggery —” starts Mavis.

“There’s plenty of that here,” butts in Jennifer, and Bliss is on the point of asking if anyone can place Johnson’s face when Jennifer lets slip that she is referring to the local entrepreneurs. “Do you know what they charge for a cuppa?” she demands.

“Cheaper to drink wine, if you ask me,” says Hugh, clearly speaking from experience.

“First day?” asks Bliss, their pallidness marking them out as new arrivals, and is surprised to learn they’re starting their second week.

“They’re going to the beach tomorrow,” Bliss explains, returning to his wine and Jacques, as if apologizing for the tardy behaviour of his countrymen.

“Not tomorrow,” says Jacques forebodingly, after a thoughtful inspection of the star-filled sky.

“Pourquoi pas?”

“Why not?” he repeats in English, castigating Bliss for daring to ask. “The wind, naturellement. Le mistral,” he declares, as if he has the power to summon the fearsome wind that will strike a chill into the hearts of les patrons of the beach restaurants, sweeping with little warning down the valley of the Rhône to toss beach mattresses and umbrellas into the sea, leaving nearnaked sun worshippers sand-blasted and wind-sore.

The skepticism on Bliss’s face is palpable — this is not the first time Jacques has forecast an ill wind. And, despite the fact that the local man loftily declared, “I am a fisherman — un pêcheur,” at their first meeting some two weeks earlier, most of his meteorological predictions have been way off course.

“Bof,” says Jacques, shrugging. “You will see.”

The squeal of tires signals a narrow escape, and turns a few heads, as Angeline cheats death to deliver a tray of drinks to a sombre group assembling a few tables into a huddle. “What’s happening?” Bliss whispers to her as she passes.

“It is zhe meeting of les hôteliers — zhey are crazy. Zhe potier makes zhem crazy,” she explains. And it’s significant that in an area renowned for potters — the pottery capital of France, if not the world — Bliss immediately knows which potter she is talking about. It can only be the bearded man, his battered straw hat perched on a bush of grey hair, throwing small vases and candle holders for a fascinated crowd at the other end of the promenade.

Bliss has paused most evenings, watching the man’s deep-set, piercingly blue eyes constantly sweep the crowd as he moulds the revolving clay, noticing the way he works the crowd as he works the piece, watching the girls and women entranced by his powerful, yet tender, fingers sensuously massaging the malleable paste into pretty pots just for them.

Spellbound by his eyes and hands, the women hang back to watch; their menfolk, uneasy at the potter’s power, try unsuccessfully to pull away, heading for the bar. The adroit fingers mesmerize and the eyes ensnare as he works pot after pot. Two pots a minute — two hearts a second. Who could not fall in love with this gentle man with the blue eyes? And the women make themselves tall in the crowd as they try to catch his eye with a smile.

“Combien? How much?” they ask, as he singles out a recipient and tenderly hands her a pot balanced on a little cardboard tray.

“Gratuit. Nothing — it is free,” he answers softly, speaking French or English as appropriate, but his begging bowl overflows with notes and coins.

Beaming, they walk away with a little masterpiece forged in wet clay. Who would not leave a large tip for such an exquisite pot? And, pot in hand, they parade their delicate prize along the promenade until they tire. Then, “Papa,” or “Mon chéri,” they snivel, “please carry my pot.” If they are lucky it will still be in shape when they return to their hotel room. “He made it just for me,” they imagine boasting to their friends back home in England or America — but how to get it home?

The monthly meeting of L’association des hôteliers de St-Juan (founded 1903, according to the bronze plaque on the wall of the Hôtel Napoléon) is about to address that issue, as the last of the twelve members mutters an apology for his tardiness and pulls up a chair.

“C’est un emmerdement,” mumbles the président, before calling on the local priest to say a few solemn words at the commencement of the meeting.

“He says it is a shitty mess,” explains Jacques, seeing the confused look on Bliss’s face.

“What is?”

“Merde — zhe pottery, of course,” Jacques says, as if Bliss could have worked that out by himself. “Zhey say zhat since zhe potter started giving away his little pots, zheir toilets are always stuffed up.”

It is a full turnout, the first in years. Not since the government tried to introduce a uniform and understandable rating system for hotels have they been so united — no snobby suit from Paris is going to tell us how many stars we can put on our signs — mon dieu!

Ten men and two women, faces and voices taut with determination, are deliberating the problem of blocked plumbing with more passion than jurors in a contentious homicide. No one seriously articulates a murderous suggestion, though a few moments of solemn consideration are given to ramming a wet pot down the bothersome artisan’s throat — a taste of his own medicine. “Salaud,” mutters one, and the black-robed priest tactfully withdraws to commune with Bacchus at the bar as he decides on the penance for calling someone a bastard.

“I have asked, begged, and pleaded,” explains the président. “But no — he will not stop.”

“I even offered him free dinners for a month in my hotel,” says one, a dustbin-bellied man.

“What did he say?” asks another.

“Zhat he would rather eat his own pots,” he mutters weightily as he forks most of an onion and anchovy pie into his mouth, adding as he chomps, “He said … my food … tastes like la ragougnasse — pigswill — but what does he know? … He is Anglais, n’est-ce pas?”

“The potter is English?” Bliss queries of Jacques, surprised. “Is that true?”

Jacques shrugs. “Perhaps.”

The meeting disintegrates into animated discussion groups as the président, lacking answers, loses control, and a few passers-by become embroiled, most in defence of the popular artisan.

“What harm is he doing?” complains a young woman carrying a pot. “He makes me smile.”

“You’d think differently if you had to dig the shit out of the toilets every morning,” replies one of the hoteliers, although the look on the woman’s face suggests otherwise.

The answer appears simple to Bliss. “Just put a notice on each toilet,” he mumbles, unaware Jacques is listening.

“Do you zhink zhey haven’t tried?” he demands, one ear tuned to the proceedings. “Autant pisser dans un violon. How you say? It is as much use as pissing into a violin.”

“We don’t say that,” protests Bliss, but he gets the drift.

The raised voices dwindle to an angry murmur as a pretty teenager walks by with two freshly minted pots. “Look what I’ve got,” she calls, beaming, balancing a pot in each hand as she rushes to show her prize to her father.

“Someone’s gonna have a bunged-up toilet tomorrow,” mutters one of the hoteliers in French, and no one smiles.

“Oh-oh! Here comes another pot headed for zhe toilet,” says Jacques, giving Bliss a nudge. Bliss turns, spotting another outstretched hand heading their way, but then his eye is caught by a familiar face hovering in the mid-distance.

“Excusez-moi,” he says to Jacques, tosses a handful of coins on the table, and takes off.

She’s gone by the time he gets there; Marcia, he’s certain, was standing alone looking thoughtfully in his direction, but she has been swept into the wash of latenight promenaders, leaving him perplexed.