Century Rain Part 51

From the back seat of the car, Auger watched Floyd check the mirrors as he turned the car into rue du Dragon. It was now late afternoon and the street had already taken on something of the gloom of evening. Auger found it difficult to believe that only seven hours had pa.s.sed since she had paid a visit to the detective's office. It might as well have been weeks ago, for all she had in common with the determined and confident version of herself who had walked out of the building, prize in hand. She had thought that the mission was all but finished, barring the trivial business of returning to the portal. You poor, pitiable fool, Auger thought. Had she stood face to face with her former self, she would have slapped her cheek and laughed in spite.

"I don't see any nasty-looking children," Floyd said.

"What about the tail from the Quai?" asked the woman in the front pa.s.senger seat, whose accent was distinctly German. Floyd had told Auger her name, but she had forgotten it as soon as she saw the boy waiting outside the hotel.

"I don't see anyone," Floyd said. "But you can bet someone's still got their eye on me."

Auger leaned forward. "Someone's following you as well?"

"I'm a popular guy." Floyd parked the car outside the horsemeat butcher Auger remembered from her visit that morning. The shop front was covered in a mosaic of red, white and black tiles, with the figure of a red prancing horse picked out in a Romanesque style beneath the words "Achat de Chevaux."

"Floyd," said the German woman, "this is all happening a little too quickly for me."

"It's happening a little too quickly for me as well, if that's any consolation," Floyd replied. "That's why we're all going up to my office to have a nice little chat, and maybe we can sort some of this out."

The German woman looked at Auger with a sneer of disapproval. "Is she seriously going to walk along the street looking like that?"

"We'll take her upstairs, let her get clean and dry," Floyd said. "Then I'm sure you won't mind if she borrows some of the clothes you left behind."

"She's welcome to any that will fit her," the woman replied, looking Auger up and down with a less than complimentary eye.

"Thank you," Auger said, with an exaggerated smile.

"Ladies, if you're going to start scratching each other's eyes out, could you at least wait until I've had a shot of whiskey? I can't stand violence on an empty stomach."

"Shut up, Floyd," the German woman said.

Floyd got out of the car and went around to the pa.s.senger side to open the door for Greta. Auger was already out of the car, looking around for anything she didn't like, or that seemed out of place. But the street was as quiet and sleepy as she remembered it, and even a loitering child would have stood out.

"He wants to talk to you," the German woman said, tapping Floyd's arm and pointing to the shop with the horse sign. Behind the gla.s.s, the proprietor was gesturing at Floyd, waving him inside.

"Monsieur Gosset will have to wait," Floyd said. "He only ever grumbles about the rent, or the noise from his upstairs neighbours."

The three of them entered Floyd's building. The elevator that had stalled Auger's exit earlier was waiting for them like an iron trap. They all got in and Floyd pushed one of the bra.s.s b.u.t.tons. With a buzz and a lurch, the car began its climb to the detective's floor.

"I'm still waiting for an explanation, Floyd," the German woman said.

"Maybe I should begin by introducing the two of you properly," Floyd said, putting on a veneer of civility. "Verity Auger, Greta Auerbach. I'm sure the two of you will get along like a house on fire."

"Or something," Auger muttered.

The elevator came to a stop. Floyd opened the gate and led them on to the landing. Gesturing for them to hang back, he walked to the pebbled-gla.s.s door that led into his office and examined the gap between the door and the frame, just above the lock. He turned back to them with a finger pressed against his lips.

"Something's wrong," he whispered. "I put a hair across this gap before I left this morning. It's not there

any more."

"You think someone's been in there?" Auger asked. Involuntarily, she touched her hip, feeling for the rea.s.suring presence of the automatic. As tempted as she was to draw the gun now, she didn't want the hole she was in to get any deeper.

"Wait," Floyd said. Very gently, he tried to turn the doork.n.o.b. Auger heard it click against resistance.

The door was still locked.

"Maybe the hair blew away," Greta suggested.

"Or maybe someone found their way inside with a skeleton key," Floyd replied.

A door a little further down the landing opened a crack, a bar of watery daylight cutting across the carpet. An elderly woman pushed her powdered face into the hall and said, in French, "Monsieur Floyd?

You had better come inside, I think."

"Not now, Madame Parmentiere," Floyd replied.

"I really think you better had," she said. Then she stepped back, the door creaking open another few inches. Looming behind her, a fire iron in his hand, was a large man dressed in a vest and braces.

"Custine!" Floyd said.

"You'd better listen to the lady," the man said, lowering the fire iron. "I don't think it's safe for us to go

into the office. The boys from the Big House have this building under heavy surveillance, and every once in a while they send someone inside to see if you're home."

"Come in, please," Madame Parmentiere insisted.

Floyd shrugged and led the way into the woman's apartment.

The layout of the rooms was completely different from the offices occupied by the detective, and even to Auger the decor and ambience suggested that they had stepped back fifty or sixty years, into a Paris at the turn of the century. There were no concessions to the modern era: not a wireless set or telephone to be seen, and certainly no television. Even the clockwork phonograph that sat beneath the window looked as if it would have suffered a fit rather than play anything more modern than Debussy. The furniture was upholstered with a maroon velvet plush, the sweeping wooden legs and armrests covered in gold leaf. The interior doorways were framed by pairs of peac.o.c.k's feathers, tilted like ceremonial scimitars. A bra.s.s bird's cage was suspended from the ceiling, but there was no evidence that a bird had ever occupied it. Stationed around the room were at least a dozen antique oil lamps, their tinted gla.s.ses throwing shades of blue, green and turquoise on to the immaculate white walls even though none of them were lit. The room faced south and was drinking in what little remained of the day's light.

Madame Parmentiere closed the door behind them. "You cannot stay here long," she said.

"I know," said the man Floyd had referred to as Custine, "and we won't inconvenience you for a moment longer than is necessary. But may we sit down for the time being?"

"Very well," the old lady said. "I suppose I had better make some tea, in that case."

They all found seats, while Madame Parmentiere pushed her way through a curtain of gleaming gla.s.s beads into what Auger presumed was an adjoining kitchen.

"So who wants to start?" Floyd asked, sticking with French. "Right now I don't know where to begin."

"Who's she?" Custine asked, nodding in Auger's direction.

"The sister," Floyd replied.

"Not much of a redhead, is she?"

"We were half-sisters," Auger said.

Floyd spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. "What can I say? She's got an answer for everything, Andre. Every d.a.m.n question you can throw at her, she's worked it all out. She even had me half-believing that a well-bred girl might take to snooping around the tunnels of the Paris Metro."

"I told you..." Auger began, but abruptly changed tack, addressing Custine. "Anyway, who are you? I've got as much of a right to ask that question of you, as you have of me."

"This is Andre Custine," Floyd said. "My a.s.sociate and friend."

"And equally hopeless case," Greta added.

Auger looked around at them. "I can't tell whether you like each other, or hate each other."

"We've been having a trying few days," Floyd replied, before suddenly lowering his voice. "Is it me or is there a bad smell in this place?" he whispered.

"It's me," Custine said cheerfully. "Or rather the shirt I just removed. How else do you think I got into the building without being picked up?"

"Monsieur Gosset," Greta said, her face lighting up with understanding. "You smell like horsemeat!"

Floyd buried his head in his hands. "It just gets better and better."

Of the four of them, Custine was the only one who seemed completely calm and unfazed, as if this was exactly the kind of thing that happened most afternoons. "I'd had enough of Michel's hospitality at Le Perroquet. He means well, but there's only so long a person can stay sane in that kind of room. Thankfully, he was able to use his contacts to find me temporary lodgings elsewhere, but I needed to return here first, having been in something of a hurry when I dropped by yesterday. But how to enter the building un.o.bserved?" He smiled, clearly enjoying the chance to be the centre of attention. "That was when it hit me: I could kill two birds with one stone. I knew that Gosset received a daily consignment of horsemeat from somewhere north of the city. I remembered the name of the delivery firm and that Gosset owed the agency a favour. A couple of telephone calls later and I'd secured myself a snug little hideaway in the back of the delivery lorry."

"You won't be able to pull tricks like that for much longer," Floyd observed. "Sooner or later they'll be searching every truck in Paris, head to toe."

"By then, I hope such subterfuge won't be necessary." Custine reached up and took a cup and saucer from the tray that Madame Parmentiere had just brought into the room. In his huge hands, the delicate chinaware looked like fragile props from a doll's house. "Anyway, here I am, although I don't intend to stick around for more than a few hours."

"Given any thought as to how you'll get out of the building?" Floyd asked.

"I'll cross that bridge when it becomes a necessity," Custine said, sipping at the very weak tea. "Chances are they'll be expecting me to arrive, not leave, so they may be off their guard."

"I like a man who thinks ahead."

Custine aimed one little finger towards Auger. "I only got half the story. You claim to be Susan White's sister, or half-sister, or whatever?"

"There's no 'claim' about it," Auger said. "I am who I said I am. If you and Monsieur Floyd don't like

it, that's entirely your problem."

"This, incidentally," Floyd said, "is what pa.s.ses for grat.i.tude in Mademoiselle Auger's scheme of things. I was treated to it when I got her out of trouble in the Metro station and again when we were near the hotel."

Custine studied Auger. "What happened near the hotel?"

"Auger saw something she didn't like," Floyd said. "Now she's refusing to talk about it."

Auger sipped at her own tea. The whole setting, with the four of them-not to mention their host-

sitting down in these very genteel surroundings, felt ludicrously inappropriate. Less than an hour ago, she had been managing the controlled contraction of a wormhole throat, after dispatching a ship back to the real Mars in another part of the galaxy. Now she was balancing chinaware on her knee while sitting primly upright on an old-fashioned upholstered armchair, in a room where even the thought of violence seemed incongruous.

"I panicked," she said. "That's all."

"Only when you saw that strange child," Floyd said.

Custine made a low growling sound before speaking. "What kind of child?"

"A nasty-looking little boy," Floyd replied. "Like something from a Bosch painting. Ring any bells,

Andre?"

"Funnily enough-"

"Nasty little children have been popping up all over this case," Floyd elaborated. "A girl here...a boy

there...maybe more than one of each. We've been trying to discount their significance, but Mademoiselle Auger was spooked by the boy she spotted long before she'd had a good look at him."

"Meaning what?" Custine asked.

"Meaning she was looking out for a child, or something like one," Floyd replied, fixing Auger with a determined gaze.

"I told you," Auger said, "I simply panicked-"

"Who are those children?" Floyd demanded. "What do they have to do with the killings? Who are they