The Retreat Page 5

That seemed to rile Roman: ‘You can’t just take up residence in a foreign country and expect to be welcomed with open arms.’

  ‘I wonder who started the fire,’ Mackie said.’

  ‘I expect this has aroused your professional interest, Immaculata.’ Roman smiled encouragingly at her. ‘Tell us what’s on your mind.’

  ‘It could be insurance fraud, or it could be arson. It needs to be investigated.’

  ‘It has nothing to do with us.’ Iris clutched the tablecloth. ‘Let the French police handle it.’

  ‘We don’t want them coming round here.’ Herbert looked alarmed.

  Sofka stood up. ‘This is a place of peace. I think we should all say a prayer for the Vietnamese family.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ Scout said loudly.

  Mackie excused herself and went up to her room.

  ‘There’s been a fire in the town,’ she told Rudyard. ‘Scout thinks it’s funny.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘The restaurant owners weren’t liked here. They’re Vietnamese. They don’t like incomers.’

  ‘Are you suggesting they drove them out?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything. I try not to speculate.’

  ‘That’s allowed in this job. Speculation, instinct, patterns of social behaviour are crucial to the work we’re doing. Scientists come up with fantastic notions then spend their lives proving them. Writers too. Think of Animal Farm, Brave New World.’

  ‘I’m thinking of The Handmaid’s Tale. An oligarchy of alpha males.’

  ‘Ah, so you’re taking the funders more seriously now. Why’s that?’

  ‘I don’t like the look of those ex legionnaires. I think it might have been arson.’

  ‘Well, it conforms to the model of racial attacks. It’s happened in Britain in areas where there’s been a large influx of immigrants.’

  ‘Don’t I know it.’

  ‘It would be good to know how Babel into all this. The legionnaires could be used as agents provoceurs. Immigration ignites racialism in those who are predisposed towards it. That leads to sectarianism. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what that leads to.’

  ‘I think this place is too small and too white to conduct an experiment like that.’

  ‘I think it’s the tip of an iceberg. Keep watching.’

  Part Two: Menace

  1

  Rudyard was annoyed when she asked him for information about French criminal procedure.

  ‘You’re not there to play the detective. You told them you were fed up with police work. Stay in character. We have bigger fish to fry. There are terrorist groups springing up all over Europe. I told you not to start investigating crime.’

  ‘There’s been an incident. Something concrete. A fact. Babel is a load of baloney.’

  ‘At the ideological level yes, like all these groups. But once they get hold of an armory and start infiltrating the population, they become a threat to national security. Look at the way the jihadists have snowballed.’

  ‘You should have sent me to Pakistan then.’

  ‘We sent you to France because you’re an outstanding officer whose talents were wasted on solving petty offences.’

  ‘Murder and assault aren’t petty offences.’

  ‘The intelligence you’ve given us so far points to a sophisticated organisation. The decoders found a word in the icon label that could trigger an offensive.’

  ‘What word?’

  ‘Einstein.’

  She laughed. ‘So you think General Pombo and all are out to nuke us?’

  ‘If you’re not serious about this, Inspector Divine, go back to Albany Street and carry on hassling street gangs. I want you to be absolutely clear that your undercover work at the château has a serious purpose. It doesn’t matter how skewed the thinking of these groups is. Their purpose is always the same: social breakdown engineered by terror. They begin by scaring the shit out of the populace with the aim of splitting them into hostile factions. Then the military step in and there’s a vacuum. Are you prepared to see a group like Pombo and co. fill up that vacuum? Think of the IRA, the Tube bombings, beheadings on the net, British muslims going abroad to train as terrorists. Take Babel seriously. And watch the folk at the château. Keep me posted.’

  She considered herself duly warned. This job called for a different mindset, and she would have to get into it if she wanted to succeed here. She didn’t like failure. Besides, it was becoming an interesting brief.

  She called Niall for news of home, but he wasn’t answering.

  She listened to Unit 5 of the French course: Talking about what you did today. She got out the kitchen box and ate an early lunch of chicken and salad with one sixth of the bread ration.

  There was a police car among the cars parked on the gravel. She walked over to the conference centre and saw Jacqueline talking to a police officer. He had removed his cap and was leaning on the counter, his gun in full view. Mackie went up to the table at the end of the foyer where the lists of delegates attending were kept, and picked up a brochure about outdoor clothing.

  Jacqueline marched up and stood in front of her with folded arms. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Ca va, Jacqueline?’ the officer called.

  ‘Ca va, papa. C’est une bonne femme du château. This centre is reserved for the conference,’ she told Mackie. It is the second time you are here. I will tell Monsieur Roman.’

  ‘No need for that. I’ll tell him myself later.’

  She heard the glass doors swing shut behind her. The policeman caught her up.

  ‘Is Jacqueline your daughter?’

  ‘Comment?’

  ‘Jacqueline. — Votre fille?’

  ‘Oui, c’est ma fille.’

  ‘Je suis agent de police. Comme vous. Je suis detective. Le Vietnamese restaurant ca va?’

  He shook his head and strode ahead of her. She reached the entrance to the drive. The police car drove off. She took a bicycle from the rack outside the kitchen and cycled into town.

  2

  The estuary road was open again. She stopped off at the bar. Lucie was there, playing pool. The Dutch veterans cheering from their corner whenever she scored. The woman from Marseille was surly. When Mackie asked for a glass of cider she counted the money slowly before drawing the drink from the tap. The place stank of smoke, even though smoking indoors was banned in France now. But this, of course, was Brittany. The Wild West.

  She sat at a table near the bikers. They were speaking English, their voices low, except for the odd burst of laughter. She had sharp hearing. All that time spent in radio vans, listening into the muffled ramblings of suspects. If you listened hard enough, you could find evidence, although you weren’t allowed to use it in a prosecution. There had been so many times when she could have nailed a suspect through eavesdropping, had it not been for the evidence rules. There appeared to be no holds barred in collecting evidence for the intelligence service. The job was all about spying on people and sneaking. This had already produced information to satisfy Rudyard. She had snapped the icon label to have something to report to him. Einstein. You couldn’t make it up. She remembered learning about him in physics. The teacher, Mr Magull, had holes in all his nylon shirts from the acid girls brought in from the chemistry lab to flick at him. He told them it was easy to split the atom and make a bomb. He thought that quoting Eistein would encourage them to study physics. It didn’t. Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it’s stupid.

  There were newspapers in a rack on the wall by the bar. A swarthy man, incongruous in a dark green suit, was sitting on a stool next to the papers.

  ‘Is this yours?’ she asked. He shook his head and the paper was in her hands before she realised he hadn’t understood her. ‘C’est vôtre journal?’

  ‘Je vous en prie.’ He looked her up and down, then called to the woman behind the bar: ‘Encore un calvo, maman, s’il te plaît.’

>   This must be La Marse’s son. There was a definite resemblance. He couldn’t have been more than thirty five or so, but his yellow face was wrinkled and haggard He stank of cigarettes, and was lighting another.

  The bikers sniggered as Mackie sat down and unfolded the paper. She looked round and saw them eyeing her up. What did they see? A woman in her forties with bottle black hair twisted up in a pleat, her unflattering cagoule draped over the other chair. She was old enough to be their mother. She unfolded the paper. Pictures of farmland and fishing boats. A dog competition. There seemed to be little of interest until a photograph in the news section caught her eye. She got the gist of the article. This was Maitre Jean Paul Duroc, the replacement examining magistrate. He had come to Pont du Calvaire from Paris. I bet that went down well, she thought.

  She finished her cider and returned the paper to the rack. The man in the suit asked her something which made the bikers laugh. She turned away and saw Lucie laughing with them.

  ‘Vas-y, Roger! Fonce.’

  He proffered his bag of peanuts.

  ‘Non, merci.’ She walked out of the bar and got on her bike. The Vietnamese restaurant had been bulldozed over. The insurance company must have all the evidence they needed to decide a claim. She wondered what had happened to the family. Were the police investigating the fire or not? From what she had seen of Jacqueline’s father, she doubted they’d get far. Maybe the new magistrate would step in to examine the case.

  She rode down to the mouth of the estuary, laid the bike on its side, and sat on a flat rock close to the waves. You couldn’t call this a beach but you could smell the ozone. She took out her phone to catch up with news in the UK, and was reading about the protests against the cuts when she heard the roar of motorbikes. The trio from the bar stumbled over the rocks and sat close to her. She ignored them at first but then realised they were talking about her crudely. In English.

  ‘Bet she sucks.’

  ‘She’s dry.’

  ‘Like an old tyre.’

  She began to feel uncomfortable. Ignoring the smell of sweat and booze, she kept her composure and scrolled through the online news from home. A giant wave had decimated seven houses on the seafront at Clacton. The area was flooded.

  The taunts became increasingly obscene. If she’d had her badge, she would have called for backup and collared them for anti-social behaviour. There was a shriek of laughter, and she looked up involuntarily. One of them had pulled down his stained jeans and was mooning at her. And then, to her disgust, he started to squat on the rock next to her bike. Calmly, she switched off her phone and wheeled her bike down the path. She was half way back to the bar when she heard the motorbikes coming up behind her. Negotiating a pothole, she was nearly knocked down as they overtook her, jeering. Then they slowed down suddenly and rode three abreast, making it impossible for her to pass them. A man was tending his beans in a fenced off garden that bordered the path. He saw what was happening and went indoors.

  Mackie wheeled her bike up to the police station, too shaky to ride it. Jacqueline’s father was behind the desk, reading the same paper she’d looked over at the bar. He seemed riveted by the local news and didn’t acknowledge her. A wave of antipathy towards the town and its people overtook her. She steadied herself against the desk. The policeman went on reading.

  ‘I want to report an incident,’ she said at last.

  He tossed the paper aside and glared at her. ‘Parlez francais’

  ‘Three men. From Chez la Marse...’

  ‘Qu’est que vous dites là? Parlez francais.’

  ‘Trois hommes de Chez la Marse...’

  ‘Mais qu’est ce que vous racontez? Vous êtes folle ou quoi?’

  ‘Le superieur, ou est—il? Does anyone here speak English?’

  ‘English? Non. Ici francais.’

  ‘OK. I’ve lost my passport. Where’s the British consul?’

  ‘Allez vous en. Fous le camp. Je vous ai bien dit. C’est toi qui embêtait Jaqueline tout a l’heure.’

  ‘What bog did you crawl out of?’ she said mildly. ‘You’re a disgrace to your badge.’

  3

  She was shaking with anger when she got back to the château. Yet she no longer felt intimidated by the bikers. It was the policeman who made her see red. She was frustrated at her lack of authority to discipline him. Her thoughts turned to the desk sergeant at Albany Street. How many times had she seen that sort of treatment meted out to someone who couldn’t speak English? How many times had she reprimanded the officer for it? Xenophobia was as rampant in the police in multicultural London as it was in this Breton backwater. She put the kettle on.

  The tea was calming her down when someone rapped on her bedroom door.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I’d like to have a word with you, if I may.’

  She let Roman in. He sat on the metal chair, removing the pair of knickers she intended to rinse out.

  ‘I understand you’ve been over to the conference centre today.’

  ‘Jacqueline told you, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes. She told me that you had been twice to the conference centre and said she had explained to you that it’s out of bounds to the community.’

  ‘I wasn’t doing any harm. I was at a loss for something to do, so I went to see who was there today. If I’d known they sold outdoor clothing, I’d have waited before buying a cagoule. Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Are you using an adaptor plug?’

  ‘I bought the kettle in Pont du Calvaire. Genuine article. French. Two prongs. No earth. Iris has her own kettle, and Joanna. I thought it was OK to brew up in one’s room.’

  He scratched his head. ‘I’m sorry to have annoyed you, Immaculata, but I must ask you to respect the rules of the establishment. The conference centre is for delegates only. There’s nothing to see over there. Christ knows, I’ve sat there enough times, twiddling my thumbs, glad-handing salesmen.’

  ‘Do you know what the police are doing about the fire at the restaurant?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Have you heard any more about the fire? I was looking at the local paper this morning. It’s seems they’ve got a new magistrate.’

  ‘Jean Paul Duroc. I’ve invited him to dinner to meet us all.’

  ‘Good. I can tell him about my experience this morning by the estuary. I reported it to Jacqueline’s dad at the police station but I got the bum’s rush because I can’t speak French properly. I asked him where the British Consul is.’

  ‘That’s Jeremy Tidball. The consulate is in Quimper. Was it a bad experience?’

  ‘Scout’s mates followed me down to the estuary and abused me verbally. In English. One of them took a shit by my bike.’

  ‘That’s appalling. I can give you Jeremy’s number. Do you want me to have a word with Scout?’

  ‘No. He wasn’t there and I’ve got to live with him here.

  ‘If you want to file a complaint, I can come to the station with you and interpret.’

  ‘Thanks, but I don’t think it would get me anywhere. There were no witnesses.’ She remembered the man in his garden who had gone indoors. He wouldn’t stand up and be counted. ‘They didn’t touch me. As a matter of fact, I’ve seen them here, at the Babel conference.’

  Roman looked at his hands. ‘They’re veterans, like Scout. There are many vulnerable members in Babel – vulnerable because of their wealth and position. The legionnaires have muscle.’

  ‘So you pay them to act as bodyguards to your funders? If my badge had any clout out here, I’d have booked them. Abuse constituting assault.’

  He sat on the bed beside her and held her hand. ‘Have you talked to Joanna or Sofka about this experience? It might help to talk to a woman.’

  ‘I haven’t seen them around today. Maybe you should warn them about the muscle men.’

  ‘I caution every woman who stays here not to walk alone.’ ‘

  ‘You didn’t caution me.’

  ‘I think you ca
n look after yourself.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t women walk alone? This is Europe, not the wilds of Borneo.’

  ‘I didn’t want you to think I was patronising you.’

  She laughed. ‘I’m sorry. I remember the introductions at dinner on my first night here.’

  ‘You found me patronising then?’

  ‘Just a tad. Yes.’

  ‘Thank you for pointing that out to me. It tells me I should address it. You’re not settled. This experience has unsettled you. You’re living in a half world, like Persephone.’

  ‘Who are you then — Pluto?’

  He drew her towards him. It was a longer kiss than she should have tolerated.

  He went on as though nothing had happened. ‘The Quaker founder, George Fox, told William Penn to wear his sword as long as he could. Shortly after that, he stopped wearing it, became a Quaker, and founded Pennsylvania.’

  ‘I’m thinking was that a good idea.’

  He reached for her again. ‘I think it’s a very good idea.’

  ‘I think we should play it cool.’

  ‘Is there anyone, at home?’

  ‘You mean have I got a man? No. I’m fine on my own. I’ve been on my own for years, raising my son. I had a fling with a colleague but that was just status games. It ended quickly. The scales fell from my eyes.’

  ‘We could comfort each other.

  ‘What makes you think I need comforting?’

  ‘You’ve had a shock today.’

  ‘What’s Scout’s surname?’

  ‘Dingle. Why do you want to know that? I said I’d have a word with him.’

  ‘And I said there was no need. Would you mind leaving me now? I’d like to have a sleep.’

  4

  At dinner that evening she regaled the community with the story of the bikers, keeping her eyes on Scout. He stared back at her defiantly.

  ‘It was your fault for going out alone,’ Iris said. ‘You provoked them’. No sympathy from that quarter then.

  ‘Why shouldn’t a woman go to a bar on her own? Do you think I was asking for it?’