“Agreed,” Floyd said. “But—”
“What if she was put here to keep her eye on another operation? White finds out something about the Berlin contract. She doesn’t necessarily know all the details, but she knows she has to find out more about it. So she writes to Kaspar Metals, posing as someone connected to the organisation that arranged the initial order.”
“Possible,” Floyd allowed.
Greta tossed some more bread into the duck pond. “Actually, there is another thing I should mention.”
“Go on.”
“The letter also covers costs for transportation and delivery of the finished goods. Now, this is the interesting part: it was broken down into three separate billing items. Somewhere in Berlin, somewhere in Paris and somewhere in Milan.”
“I don’t remember seeing addresses in that letter.”
“You didn’t. The man who wrote the letter must have assumed that both parties already had that information.”
Floyd had been wondering where the Milan connection would come in. “Except we don’t have that information,” he said. “All we have is a couple of lines on a map of Europe.” He remembered the L-shaped figure, with the neatly marked distances between the three cities. “I still don’t know what the markings on that map mean, but they obviously relate to the work being done by that factory in some way.”
“One last thing,” Greta said. “That train ticket. It was for the overnight express to Berlin, and it hasn’t been used.”
“Is there a date on the ticket?”
“Issued on September fifteenth for travel from Gare du Nord on the twenty-first. She’d reserved a sleeping compartment.”
“She died on the twentieth,” Floyd said, recalling the details in his notebook. “Blanchard said that she gave him the tin on the fifteenth or sixteenth—he couldn’t be sure which. She must just have booked the ticket and never used it.”
“I wonder why she didn’t simply get on the first train to Berlin, rather than book passage on one that wasn’t due to leave for four or five days?”
“Maybe she had other business she had to attend to first, or maybe she’d called ahead and made an arrangement to visit the factory on a particular day. Either way, she knew she wasn’t getting on that train for a few days, but she also knew she was in danger and that the tin might fall into the wrong hands.”
“Has it occurred to you, Floyd, that if someone killed her because of what was in that tin, they might do it again?”
The party with the elderly man had retreated from the duck pond, the wheelchair crunching away across the gravelled promenade in the general direction of the Orangerie. Beyond the party, looming above the trees lining the Seine, the slick, wet roof of the Gare d’Orsay on the Left Bank shone in the sunlight. Despite its name, it was many years since the Gare d’Orsay had been a railway station. There had been vague plans to turn it into a museum, but in the end the city authorities had decided that the most effective use of the grand old building would be as a prison for high-profile political detainees. Seeing the prison, something tugged at this memory, some elusive connection waiting to be completed.
He dished out the remainder of the bread to the few ducks that had stayed loyal. “I know there are risks. But I can’t just drop the case because some people might not want me to succeed.”
Greta studied him carefully. “How much does this dogged determination have to do with what Marguerite just told you?”
“Hey,” Floyd said defensively, “this isn’t about anything other than getting a job done for a client. A job that happens to pay pretty well, I might add.”
“So that’s all it boils down to: money?”
“Money and curiosity,” he admitted.
“No amount of money will make up for a broken neck. Take what you have and go to the authorities. Give them all the evidence and let them piece things together.”
“Now you sound like Custine.”
“Maybe he has a point. Think about it, Floyd. Don’t get in too deep. You’re a big man, but you’re not a strong swimmer.”
“I’ll know when I’m in too deep,” he said.
Greta shook her head. “I know you too well. You’ll only realise you’re in too deep when you start drowning. But what’s the point of arguing? I’m hungry. Let’s walk to the Champs-Elysées: there’s a place there that does good pancakes. You can buy me an Esquimo ice cream along the way. Then you can take me back to Montparnasse.”
Floyd surrendered, offering her a hand. They set off in the direction of the avenue, Floyd watching as the wind whipped up in the distance and hoisted someone’s umbrella into the sky.
“How’s the band doing?” Greta asked.
“The band ceased to exist when you left,” Floyd said. “Since then we’ve not exactly been snowed under with offers.”
“I was only ever one part of it.”
“You’re a damned good singer and a damned good guitar player. You left a big hole.”
“You and Custine are both good musicians.”
“Good doesn’t cut it.”
“Well, then you’re better than good.”
“Custine, maybe.”
“It’s not as if you’re the worst bass player in the world, either. You always knew you could make it work if you only wanted it badly enough.”
“I make the moves. I can lay down a pretty steady beat.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. There are a hundred bands in Nice who could use a bass player like you, Floyd.”
“But I can’t do anything you haven’t seen before. I can’t make it new.”
“Not everyone wants it new.”
“But that’s the point. All we ever do is play the same old swing numbers in the same old way. I’m tired of it. Custine can barely bring himself to take out his saxophone.”
“So do something different.”
“Custine keeps trying. You know how he was always trying to get us to play that fast eight-beat stuff, when all we ever wanted to do was stay in four-four?”
“Maybe Custine was on to something.”
“He heard a guy playing here a few years ago,” Floyd said. “Some heroin fiend from Kansas City. Looked sixty, but he was really about my age. Called himself Yardhound or Yard-dog or something. He kept playing that crazy improvisational stuff, like it was the wave of the future. But no one wanted to know.”
“Except Custine.”
“Custine said it was the music he’d always had in his head.”
“So find a way to help him play it.”
“Too fast for me,” Floyd said. “And anyway, even if it wasn’t, no one else wants to hear it. It’s not stuff you can dance to.”
“You shouldn’t give up that easily,” Greta admonished.
“It’s too late. They don’t even want straight jazz anymore. Half the clubs we played last year are out of business now. Maybe it’s different in the States, but—”
“Some people won’t ever get it,” Greta said. “They don’t want to see black people and white people getting along, let alone playing the same music. Because there’s always a danger that the world might actually become a better place because of it.”
Floyd smiled. “Your point being?”
“Those of us who care shouldn’t give up that easily. Maybe we need to stick our necks out from time to time.”
“I stick my neck out for no one.”
“Not even for the music you love?”
“Maybe there was a time when I used to think jazz could save the world,” Floyd said. “But I’m older and wiser now.”
Walking the gravel path, they passed the party with the elderly man again and something in Floyd’s head clicked like a key in a well-oiled lock. Maybe it was the conversation he’d had with Marguerite, or perhaps the juxtaposition of the man and the political prison across the river, but Floyd suddenly recognised him. The man lolled forward in the wheelchair, his jaw slack, a thin worm of drool curling down his chin. His skin was glued to his skull like a single layer of papier mâché. His hands trembled with some kind of palsy. Beneath his blanket, it was said that the doctors had hacked away more than they had left behind. Whatever trickled through his veins was now more chemical than blood. But he had survived the cancers, just as he had survived that assassination attempt in May 1940, when the advance into the Ardennes had come to an inglorious end. The shape of the face was still recognisable, along with the outdated, priggish little moustache and the vain swoop of thinning hair, white now where once it had been black. It was almost twenty years since his ambitions had crashed and burnt during that disastrous summer. In the carnival of monsters that the century had produced, he was only one amongst many. He’d talked hate back then—but who hadn’t? Hate was how you made things happen in those years. It was the lever that moved things. It didn’t necessarily mean he believed it, or that he would have been any worse for France than any of the men who had come after him. Who could begrudge him a morning in the Tuileries Gardens, after all the time he had served in the Gare d’Orsay? He was just a sad old man now, less a figure of revulsion than one of pity.