‘I should say not!’ said the woman with the broom. ‘No one wants to see your horrible bottom!’
‘Then you oughtn’t be peering in at my window!’ the dealer retorted. The sweeper shook her fist in mock fury and cackled.
The Sergeant realised that there was another Mancreu here which he had not known about, a Mancreu of the very old. It was easy to think of the island as one place with various parts dangling off it, but in truth it was layer upon layer, and each of them as real as the others.
‘Will you all Leave together?’ he asked.
The card-players shrugged. ‘If we live that long,’ the dealer said. ‘And when we leave, we will leave the houses as they should be. Perhaps houses have souls and we will meet them again one day. Or perhaps they will just go into this burning with dignity. Your man Kershaw, thought so. He came here when he first arrived and he tried to pretend he saw only bricks. But he cried a little when he realised the houses would die. He’s a decent man.’
The Sergeant reassessed them all once more. Old and watchful. The whole street was filled with old, watchful men and women. He tried his luck. ‘Anyone seen this dog?’
They shook their heads. ‘But it can’t have gone far,’ one of the players muttered, to general agreement.
The dealer dealt a fresh hand, and the Sergeant took the gentle hint and moved away down the perfect, empty street. A moment later, he heard the man’s voice raised in his direction once more.
‘Hey, Sergeant!’ he called.
‘No,’ the Sergeant shouted back, ‘I don’t want to see your horrible bottom, either!’
This rated a huge laugh from the card-players, and snorting approval from the sweeper. The dealer shushed them all. ‘You didn’t ask about the fish!’ he complained.
The Sergeant shook his head. For a moment, the statement made no sense. What fish? But yes, it had been on his list the day of Shola’s death: Beneseffe’s stolen catch. He hadn’t asked them about it, primarily because he had completely forgotten, but even had he remembered there was no earthly reason to suppose that they would know anything. Except, he realised, that they knew everything. They were one of the last stations in what had once been the great Mancreu gossip network, and their art had been refined rather than diluted by their proximity to one another, and their loneliness. So they knew – from who could say what messengers – that he was looking for stolen fish. This was no doubt how the boy got some of his uncanny information: he talked to someone who watered plants and sat by the roadside, someone who chatted and watched, and he traded time for knowledge.
Tomorrow, the Sergeant thought, he would come back here and ask about the boy, if he still needed to. He would bring a picture. He might even explain why. He thought they would understand, and surely they would respect his desire to know whether such a thing was possible before he offered it.
In the meantime, he raised his hands in surrender. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Now I’m asking. Who took the fish?’
‘The Ukrainians,’ the dealer said, waving him away. ‘Pechorin has a brother on a factory ship. They come by every few months and buy whatever he can steal. You can sell a big tuna for hundreds of thousands of dollars in Japan. He’s not a bad man, maybe, but that’s a lot of money.’
It would turn out to be true, the Sergeant knew. He’d never prove it, and if he did there’d be nothing he could do about it. But it would be true, and that was something. Perhaps the fishermen who had been robbed would go into business with Pechorin. It might be easier all round.
That cheered him, but by the time he reached the Portmaster’s office he was frowning again. He had walked and talked, called in at a petrol station, a tabac and a greengrocer, and he had made inquiries. For his trouble, he had no more information about Madame Duclos’s missing dog – but he had been asked about three more.
Beneseffe politely expressed his pleasure at the Sergeant’s presence in his office, and then smiled much more genuinely at the idea that the fish-theft might be a profitable business opportunity.
‘I’ll put the word out,’ he said. ‘Good catch, Lester. Good timing.’
‘Been a bit twitchy, has it?’
‘Twitchy. Exactly. A lot of sharp knives on the docks. A lot of young men with large balls.’
‘Balls and knives don’t go well together.’
‘No. They do not.’
‘Speaking of twitchy, what do you hear about missing dogs?’ Beneseffe looked completely blank. ‘Never mind. Or guns? Imported guns?’
The Portmaster winced. ‘Shola.’
‘Yes.’
‘I have been thinking since it happened. There are many boats which might bring in guns. Fewer now, but still enough. And no Customs authority any more. But who, and when, and why, and how to find out… I don’t know. I would just ask, but now they would know why. They would be ashamed.’
‘Maybe that would help.’
Beneseffe sighed. ‘Yes. If it was you, Lester, you would be ashamed and you would tell me. But not everyone is you.’
‘Ask anyway. Please.’
‘Of course.’
They drank a cup of tea on the wooden veranda in front of the office – the Sergeant, very much against his instinct, with his back to the street. When his spine itched and tingled in this position, he took comfort in the dirty reflective surface of the windows and in the knowledge that Beneseffe’s wide smile was being read all the way from the chandler’s stall to the harbour gate as a sign and an omen of peace. The British Sergeant has done his job. Say that much: say he, at least, understands obligation.
Their tea was interrupted – though it had come, in real terms, to its natural end and was now just a matter of the last of the pot – by the sound of a large engine, and then a gleeful barrage of obnoxious hooting. The Sergeant, glancing in the glass, saw the image of a Toyota Hilux 4×4 stopped at the kerb, the driver’s door opening to reveal a dark-haired elegant woman with violently orange fingernails.
‘Hey, Beneseffe! Hullo, Lester!’ Inoue said, dropping down from the driver’s seat. It was a long way for a person of less than average height, but the brief moment of free fall did nothing to ruffle her. Beneseffe waved a greeting.
‘Doctor,’ the Sergeant replied. She frowned at him.
‘We have discussed this, Lester. We have agreed that we will be informal.’
That made him smile. ‘I recall you telling me I was going to be informal, certainly.’
‘And are you so amazingly rude that you will argue with me?’ Perfect fingers spread on her chest – the nails were like spots of sherbet against her shirt – and her face took on an expression of cartoonish shock. ‘Me? A senior scientist and de facto diplomatic representative of a major power?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘Mmph. Practise! And practise also answering your phone!’
The Sergeant belatedly took out his handset and inserted the battery. A moment later it chirruped and informed him that he had a message. Inoue rolled her eyes.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘Meh. I have business here. The Portmaster has impounded my equipment out of malice. Even now the finest Japanese technology is getting covered in fish scales and salt water in his wretched hovel and soon millions of dollars of sophisticated hardware will be nothing more than dust.’
Beneseffe sighed. ‘It’s not impounded,’ he said. ‘It’s just not unloaded. There’s a backlog.’