“Cleared out at the beginning of the week,” said a voice from the queue. Elder turned towards it.
“Do you know where they were headed next?”
Mutters and shakes of the head. “Someone down on the front might know. A landlord, someone like that.”
“Yes,” said Elder. “Thank you.” A woman was coming into the shop.
“Hello, Elsie,” said a voice from the queue. “Here, any idea where that fair was off to?”
“Same as every year,” said Elsie authoritatively. “Brighton.”
She wondered why the man beamed at her before rushing out of the shop. “You get some funny types,” she said, “this time of year. Some right funny types.” Then she sniffed and joined the end of the queue, where there was valuable gossip to be exchanged and the man was soon forgotten.
Madame Herault and Barclay were getting along like the proverbial house on fire. Despite the language barrier, despite barriers of age and culture, they knew one thing: they both liked to dunk their croissants in their coffee.
They sat together at the table in the kitchen. Now and then Madame Herault would call for Dominique, and Dominique would call back that she’d be there in a moment. There was a news program on the radio, the presenters talking too fast for Barclay to make much sense of any of the stories. Madame Herault commented from time to time before shrugging her shoulders and returning to her coffee. She pushed the basket of croissants and chocolatines closer to him, exhorting him to eat, eat. He nodded and smiled, smiled and nodded. And he ate.
He’d spent a restless night in the spare room. Dominique’s bedroom was through the wall from his, and he could hear her old bed creaking and groaning. His own bed was newer, more solid. It was also short, so that he couldn’t lie stretched out unless he lay in a diagonal across the bed. His feather-filled pillow smelled musty, as did the sheets and the single blanket. Finally, he shrugged off sleep altogether and got up. He still had a lot of bits and pieces left over from his shopping trip to the electronics store. He plugged in the soldering iron and hummed an aria or two from The Marriage of Figaro, waiting for it to warm...
Now here she came, into the kitchen. Madame Herault gave an insulted gasp. Barclay almost gasped, too. Dominique was dressed in black-buckled ankle boots, black tights, black leather miniskirt, a white T-shirt torn at the armpits and spattered with paint, and more jewelry than Barclay had seen outside a department store. Her eyes were surrounded by thick black eyeshadow and her face was dusted white, making her lips seem redder than ever before. She’d teased her hair up into spikes, brittle with gel or hair spray, and she wore three earrings in either ear.
Her mother said something biting. Dominique ignored her and leaned past Barclay to grab a chocolatine. With it in her mouth, she went to the stove and poured coffee from the ancient metal percolator, then dragged a chair out from beneath the table and sat down between her mother and her guest. Barclay tried not to look at her. He kept his eyes on the tabletop, on her mother, on the pans and utensils hanging from the wall in front of him. He could smell patchouli oil. He could feel his heart pounding. She really did look incredible. It was just that she wasn’t Dominique anymore.
She was wearing her disguise.
“I telephoned a colleague,” she informed Barclay in English. “He’s checking on possible Janettas. With luck there won’t be more than one or two.”
He nodded. “I’ve made a wire,” he said.
“A wire?” Flakes of pastry escaped from her mouth.
“A bug for you to wear, so I can listen.”
She swallowed some coffee. “When did you make it?”
“During the night. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Me neither. I was reading your file. It was interesting. I would like to meet Mr. Dominic Elder.”
Madame Herault, who had been muttering throughout and averting her gaze, now said something aloud, directed at her daughter. Dominique replied in similarly caustic tones then turned to Barclay. “My mother says I am insulting her in front of a guest. I’ve told her all the women dress like this in London. She’s waiting for you to agree.”
Barclay shrugged and nodded. Madame Herault pursed her lips and stirred her coffee, shaking her head. The rest of breakfast was passed more or less in silence. After breakfast, Dominique and Barclay retired to the spare room.
“We need some tape,” he said.
“I’ll bring some.”
She was back within a minute, holding a roll of thick brown packing tape.
“Just as well your T-shirt’s baggy,” said Barclay. “Otherwise, anyone could see you’re wearing a wire.”
She stood with the transmitter in her hand. There wasn’t much to it — a length of wire connecting a small microphone at one end to a transmitter at the other. It was bulkier than Barclay would have liked, and at the same time it was more delicate, too. His soldering wasn’t perfect, but it would hold... he hoped.
“Lift your shirt at the back,” he ordered. She did so, and he stood behind her. Her skin was very lightly tanned, smooth, broken only by a pattern of variously sized brown moles. She was not wearing a bra. This is work, he told himself. Just work.
He tore off a length of tape with his teeth and placed it over the wire, pushing it onto her back so that the transmitter hung free below the tape itself. Then around to her front, the T-shirt lifted still higher so that he could make out the swelling shadowy undersides of her breasts. Work, work, work. He ran the wire around to her smooth stomach, wondering whether to place the microphone just above her belly button, or higher, in the hollow of her sternum.
“Having fun down there?” said Dominique.
“Sorry, I’m considering placements.” He touched her stomach then her sternum with the tip of his forefinger. “Here or here?”
“Ah, I see. High up, I think. Unless the man is a midget, the microphone will be closer to his mouth.”
“Good point.” He tore off more tape and secured the microphone in the cleft just below her breasts. Then he used more tape to attach the wire to her side. “Okay,” he said at last. “Just try not to wriggle or bend over. He might hear the tape crinkling.”
She dropped her T-shirt and examined herself in the mirror, twisting to see if the wire was visible through the cotton. She stepped over to the window, then walked back slowly towards Barclay. He shook his head.
“Can’t see a thing,” he said.
“What if I stretch myself?” She thrust back her shoulders and stuck out her chest. Barclay still couldn’t see any sign either of brown tape or of black wire. And as for the slight bulge of the microphone itself...
“If you do that,” he said, “I don’t think Jean-Pierre’s eyes are going to rest between your breasts so much as on them.”
She thumped his shoulder. “You are teasing,” she said. He was about to deny it when there was a sound from the halclass="underline" the telephone was ringing. Dominique dashed out of the room to answer it, spoke excitedly, then dashed back.
“The fifth arrondissement,” she said. “A street in the Latin Quarter. There is a bar called Janetta’s.”
“Sounds good. Lift your T-shirt again. After all that running around, I want to check the tapes are still fast.”
“Fast?”
“Still stuck down.”
“Okay.” She lifted the T-shirt. “But listen,” she said, “there’s more. In the same street lives an Australian, an anarchist. Called John Peter Wrightson. He’s lived in France for years. You see?”