The Designer by Marius Gabriel

Author:Marius Gabriel [Gabriel, Marius]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612185811
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2017-09-30T21:00:00+00:00

Twenty-eight hideously uncomfortable hours later, the door of her cell opened, framing a burly gendarme. ‘Where’s the American woman?’

‘Here,’ she said.

He jerked his head. ‘Come.’

Bidding farewell to her cellmates, with whom she’d been swapping tales of struggle all night, Copper allowed herself to be hustled down the stinking corridor.

‘Long live the Revolution!’ one of her cellmates called after her.

‘Where are you taking me?’ Copper demanded, trying to sound brave.

‘You’ve been discharged,’ the gendarme replied. ‘You’ve got friends.’

Her rescuer was waiting at the front desk wearing an impeccable camel-hair overcoat and a trilby.

‘Henry!’

‘Are you all right?’ Henry asked anxiously, examining her.

‘They took my camera.’

He held up the Rolleiflex. ‘I’ve got it back, don’t worry.’

‘And they destroyed all my photographs! I had pictures of police brutality in there. The world had a right to see them.’

Henry sighed. ‘Any injuries? Physical ones, I mean.’

‘Just a few bruises.’

‘Then let’s get out of here.’

‘Hold on a moment,’ Copper protested as he started ushering her out. ‘I’m not leaving everybody else behind.’

‘You can’t do anything for them,’ Henry replied. ‘They’re going to be charged tomorrow morning and they’ll probably all get six months in jail. Unless you want the same?’

‘I’ve done nothing wrong. Neither have they.’

‘I can’t help the others. But you – participating in civil unrest, refusing to obey police orders, resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer – it’s taken me two hours to talk you out of here,’ he said in a low voice. ‘They say you were armed.’

‘I was wearing a helmet. That’s not being armed.’

‘You really can be astonishingly naïve,’ he snorted.

‘I didn’t want my brains knocked out by those bastards.’

‘Let’s go before they change their minds.’

‘I’m going to make an official complaint about them destroying my photographs.’

He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t. They’re already talking about impounding your camera.’

Reluctantly, Copper allowed herself to be hustled out of the police station by Henry. In his car, she was ill-tempered, partly through lack of sleep.

‘I didn’t need you to come and rescue me,’ she said ungraciously.

‘Has it occurred to you that if you were convicted, you’d be deported?’ he enquired.

‘The police behaved disgustingly,’ she said, evading the question. ‘I saw women being beaten with clubs.’

‘A policeman was shot yesterday in that demonstration. And there are half a dozen more in hospital.’

‘They had it coming,’ she said grimly. ‘They attacked the crowd without provocation. They’re nothing more than paid thugs.’

‘They’re doing their job – trying to protect France.’

‘From people who speak their mind about injustice?’ she asked scornfully. ‘Is that this communist revolution you keep talking about, Henry? You told me the world needs freshness and youth; a new start. That’s exactly what the communists are promising.’

He was infuriatingly unmoved. ‘What they promise and what they deliver are two different things, Copper. You’re not too young to remember that when the fascists came along, they were also promising freshness, youth and a new start. They and the communists deliver the same horrors.’

‘As a capitalist, you would say that.’

‘You may find this hard to believe, but there was a time when I called myself a communist.

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