The Merde Factor: (Paul West 5) by Stephen Clarke

Author:Stephen Clarke [Clarke, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781448108275
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2012-09-13T07:00:00+00:00

III

There’s a stock character in every film about the FBI: he or she is permanently at their computer, hooked up to a phone, collecting and redistributing information like some kind of digital chess grandmaster.

A call comes in from a field operative: ‘All we know about the suspect is that he visited Miami sometime between 2001 and 2009 and hired a grey Ford. Or it might have been a black Honda.’

The geek gets to work on the keyboard and ten seconds later he or she replies: ‘Subject’s name is Jack Smith, age forty-five years, six months and three days, weight 128 pounds, and he’s now walking along Santa Monica Boulevard wearing a powder-blue shirt and size nine Timberlands. No, hang on, nine and a half. He’s a left-handed Gemini. Need to know his favourite ice-cream flavour?’

Well, Marie-Dominique’s secretary was exactly unlike that character.

Her name, I knew, was Monique, and I’d been introduced to her very briefly on my first visit to the Ministry. She’d shaken my hand as though she was afraid I might give her bird flu, her nervousness no doubt the long-term effect of the decibels aimed at her by Marie-Dominique.

She worked in the cubicle next to Marie-Dominique’s, and had her back to me when I arrived at her workspace. I was just about to cough politely when she turned around. She’d heard me coming. Or rather seen me – she had a small round mirror propped up by the side of her computer. And if I wasn’t mistaken, the coloured pattern I’d seen on her screen just before she turned round was a game of solitaire.

‘Bonjour,’ I said, and introduced myself again.

‘Bonjour.’ She rattled the large beads of a wooden necklace that was hanging down over a beige T-shirt.

‘Marie-Dominique n’est pas ici,’ I said. Stating the obvious seemed like a safe opener.

‘Elle est en congé,’ Monique said, pointing at the wall by my head.

It was the holiday chart, showing everyone in the department’s congés right up till the end of August, with blue days clearly meaning holidays. There were as many blue lines as Napoleon’s army. And the next two days were coloured in for Marie-Dominique.

Having answered my question, Monique was now looking anxious for me to piss off and leave her to her solitaire.

‘I need to make a rendez-vous with her for when she returns. Is that possible?’ I asked in my best French.

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘Don’t you have her diary?’ I asked.

‘Yes, of course.’ She nodded towards her computer’s blank screen.

‘And are there any spaces in the coming days?’

She turned back to her computer and clicked around for a full minute. Her card game appeared and disappeared. A Word file opened and closed.

‘Merde,’ she muttered.

‘Is her diary on holiday, too?’ I asked, giving a little laugh to show that I was joking. But she just kept clicking.

Finally she turned back again. ‘There are possibilities,’ she said, reluctantly.

‘So can I make a rendez-vous?’

She sucked air through her teeth to show that this was as difficult as, say, borrowing France’s presidential palace for a hen night.

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