Clovenhoof 03 Godsquad Page 14

  “I’m a tewwible man,” sniffed Francis.

  Agnes Thomas smiled. It was not a particularly convincing smile, more of an upside down scowl.

  “So,” she said pointedly, “will you three be joining us on our little jolly today?”

  “Laying wreaths, aren’t you?” said Joan.

  “That’s tomorrow morning. Today, a trip to the Louvre — get our dose of culture – and then an evening cruise along the Seine. Joan, Em, you are very welcome. Perhaps your Uncle Francis needs some time alone to process his grief.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Em. “Today, we need to buy Joan and Francis here tickets for their onward journey.”

  “Quite,” agreed Christopher.

  “Oh, you’re not going with them?”

  “I have business to attend to in Paris,” she said.

  Christopher saw Agnes look at Em, at her army surplus jacket, purple trousers and thick eye make-up, and could tell that she was wondering what kind of business this woman could possibly be involved in.

  “Shame you’re not coming,” said Lynne. “I hear the Louvre’s lovely. I’ve bought a special guide book.”

  “I’m going to see the Mona Lisa,” said Miriam. “And the Venus de Milo.”

  “Tourist,” said Gwenda critically.

  “Oh, and what would you recommend?” asked Miriam tartly.

  “Skipping the Louvre entirely and finding a pub,” Christopher said, sound in the knowledge that the woman couldn’t hear him.

  “For me,” said Gwenda, “it has to be the paintings of Titian.”

  “Oh, that sounds thrilling,” said Christopher.

  Joan kicked him under the table.

  “There’s the gorgeous portrait of Francis the First.”

  “Eh?” said Francis.

  “Not you,” said Em.

  “The Entombment of Christ,” continued Gwenda. “It’s so human. The poses. And then there’s Titian’s painting of St Christopher.”

  “What?” said Christopher.

  “He’s this hulky brute with the baby Christ on his shoulder,” Gwenda‘s eyes glazed over dreamily. “The muscles…”

  Christopher coughed loudly.

  “Maybe I will join the ladies on their tour today,” he said as casually as he could. “Take a gander at the paintings like.”

  “Narcissist,” said Joan.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Agnes.

  “Yes, we will have to ‘miss it,’” said Em. “We need to go to the Gare de Lyon today and make sure all my family are heading south tomorrow morning.”

  She glared at Christopher as she said this.

  Christopher waved her concerns away.

  “Look, Aunty Em, I can do the Louvre, check out some real art and catch up with you later. It’s not as though I’m going to miss the train. I’m the patron saint of travel, after all.”

  “Yes, Major Chevrolet, we have rules against workplace harassment in the UK as well, but I’m working on sound information that Mary van Joachem may be in Puteaux in Paris. We’re there now, I need a new location for the phone – get your nose out of my ear, boy! – No, not you, Major. It’s…”

  The man, Matt, put the phone down. The Wolf of Gubbio, hunched up in the passenger seat, looked at him. The man looked cranky and irritable.

  “It looks like it’s just you and me for now, partner. Well, you, me and your nose. Where are they, boy?”

  The wolf sniffed the air. He leaned forward.

  “That way?”

  The wolf nudged the glove compartment open with his nose and sniffed the empty packet of crisps inside.

  “Right, you’re hungry,” said the man, Matt. He pointed to a shop across the road from where they were parked.

  “Salon Pluche Toilettage. Well, we need a break. A short one.”

  The wolf yawned loudly, his tongue rolling several inches along the tiny car’s dashboard.

  “Yeah, well sleeping on the back seat with you as a blanket wasn’t much fun for me either.”

  The man, Matt, opened the door and the Wolf of Gubbio leapt out into the road. A car swerved and beeped its horn. The wolf didn’t even look up. In his experience, everything, big or small, moved out of his way, not the other way round.

  “Come on, boy.”

  The man pushed the shop door open and the wolf caught a waft of the most amazing range of smells. True, there were some strange chemical and flowery scents but there was an interweaving haze of dozens of dogs, smells new and old. It was like a library of dog scent, a digest of doggy doings and business for miles around. The wolf could have spent the entire day just smelling and discovering those smells but, rising above the dogginess, was the delicious smell of food and the wolf was very hungry. The wolf raked open a nearby paper sack and chomped on the crunchy snacks within.

  “I hope you can pay for that,” said the woman at the counter.

  “Absolutely,” said the man, Matt, getting out his wallet. “While I’m here, I wonder if you could help me with some directions.”

  “What kind of dog is that anyway?”

  “Er, a malamute wolfhound crossbreed.”

  “He should be on a lead.”

  “We discussed it. We argued about it. He won.”

  The Wolf of Gubbio ignored the human conversation. He even ignored the ping of the shop door as other people came and went. He was sufficiently focussed on sating his hunger that he even let one of the humans ruffle his fur without bothering to bite their hand off at the wrist.

  However, soon enough, the sack was empty and the wolf was full. The man, Matt, was still in conversation with the woman. He had his phone in his hand and they had spread a street map out on the counter.

  Next to the wolf was a door with the words ‘salon toilettage’ written on it. He nosed his way through and found himself in a tiled room of taps and stinking bottles of soaps, and of a row of floor level pens. The wolf padded up to the first pen and sniffed.

  The large poodle bitch within sniffed back and whined.

  The wolf growled softly in his throat. He had eaten his fill. His master was not many miles distant. He should be on his way. And yet…

  “Where’s he gone?” said the man, Matt, in the other room.

  “I do not know,” said the woman. “I think he went out.”

  “Damn!” said the man, Matt.

  The shop door chimed as the man ran out.

  “I told you he should be on a lead.”

  The wolf sniffed. The bitches in the other pens crowded forward. A short Lhasa Apso yipped at him eagerly.

  The wolf carefully grasped the latch on the poodle’s door in his teeth and, without effort, ripped it away.

  Em stabbed the touch screen of the automated ticket machine at Gare de Lyon.

  “You understand that this is my precious cash I’m spending on you, Joan?” she said around the cigarette clenched in her lips.

  “That’s very kind of you. Are you sure you won’t reconsider coming with us?”

  “Oh, I’m sure. Here. A train from Paris to Toulon via Aix-en-Provence. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  She pressed the confirm button and the machine recited her journey selection back at her. She pressed again.

  “You have selected two adult tickets,” said the machine smoothly.

  “Invisi—boy will have to sit in the baggage cart.”

  “If you need us to give you a few days here to sort out your private business, I am sure we can wait,” said Joan.

  “The Almighty Himself wequested we take you with us.”

  “Not interested,” said Em.

  “Insert payment,” said the machine.

  “One should not wefuse the Lord’s orders so lightly.”

  “Listen, Frank. When a girl says, ‘no,’ it means, ‘no.’”

  “Insert payment,” said the machine.

  “All right, all right.” Em pulled several grubby euro notes from her pocket.

  “Mother Mary,” said the machine.

>   “For tit’s sake!” she snarled. “I’m doing it –”

  Joan blinked. Em cleared her throat.

  “Did that machine just…?”

  “It did,” said Joan.

  “Mother Mary, is that you?” said the machine.

  “What the fuck?” said Em.

  “It’s Simon,” said Joan.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” said Em. “That’s not possible…”

  “I have done it, Mother Mary,” said the machine, calm and measured.

  Em looked at the screen. She poked the touch screen experimentally.

  “Is this some sort of joke?”

  “The second angel sounded his trumpet,” said Simon, “and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.”

  “The second trumpet,” said Joan.

  “Wevelation,” said Francis.

  “I know it’s the bloody book of Revelation,” said Em. “But – fuck! – how?”

  “Insert payment,” said the machine.

  “No, no,” said Em. “That machine was speaking to us. I mean, to us.”

  “Like the telephone,” said Joan.

  “What telephone?” said Francis.

  “In the house, in Belgium. It’s Simon. It’s him.”

  Em gripped Joan’s arm tightly.

  “You need to start talking, Joan. And you need to start making sense.”

  Christopher knew Paris with an intimacy that no mortal man or woman could have hoped to match. As a former patron saint of travel, his knowledge of the world came from the prayers of those in dire straits. Those places that were rarely travelled or which presented no problems were blank spaces in Christopher’s map of the world, whereas travel black spots were familiar to him in painfully clear detail. No one knew Beijing, London, New York or São Paulo quite like Christopher. And Paris… Paris had, for centuries, been a city of stuck vehicles, overcrowded trains and a million frustrated drivers. And if one place was the high definition centre of Paris’s traffic woes it was the roundabout that circled the Arc de Triomphe.

  Christopher had followed the WI tour party along the historic axis of the city, from La Grande Arche de la Defense, past Napoleon’s triumphal arch, down the Champs-Élysées and on to the Louvre museum. He stayed with the party after they had paid to enter (getting in for free was small compensation for being unseen and unheard) and stayed by Lynne as she led a bunch of them round with a paperback Guide Erotique de Louvre in her hand.

  The women quickly found their way to the Greek sculptures and, despite the signs prohibiting photography, took plenty of pictures of key parts of sculptural anatomy while Lynne read from the book.

  “Ooh, look at his pidyn,” said Miriam. “He’s a bit timid, isn’t he?”

  “He’s probably just cold,” Val ventured.

  “Greece is a hot country,” said Julie. “He’s got no excuse.”

  “Now, this one over here…” said Lynne.

  “Is a bit more like it,” said Val.

  “Reminds me of my Howard,” lamented Lynne. “In his younger days.”

  “And what’s he doing with his fingers? Filthy, filthy.”

  Soon enough, Christopher tired of a grand tour of the willies and bums of the Louvre and, leaving the ladies in hysterics as they looked over a recumbent Hermaphrodite, went looking for his Titian.

  The maze of multi-levelled corridors of the Louvre was no maze to Christopher and he was, within minutes, standing in a gallery of Renaissance oil paintings, gazing at himself.

  “Blimey, it looks just like me,” he said.

  He approached, stroking his own beard as he contemplated the striding figure in the image.

  “Look, look,” he said to visitors passing by. “It’s uncanny. I never posed for it, you know.”

  Few stopped to look and those that did mostly stared at the image blankly for a few second before moving on.

  “Look at me. I mean, the river was deeper than that. It looks like me and the baby Jesus are just off for a paddle. He looks happy though, doesn’t he?”

  A man and woman stopped in front of the picture.

  “St Christopher,” said the man.

  “That’s me.”

  “There’s a real bucolic air about this figure,” said the woman.

  The man nodded.

  “I look bloody marvellous,” said Christopher.

  “A sense of raw energy,” said the man.

  “Aye,” said Christopher. “Check me out.”

  He stood in front of the painting and, glancing back to correct his posture, adopted a pose identical to that in the picture.

  “You have to imagine the lad Christ on my back,” he said. “He were just like that too. Happy lad. That’s what he was like. Em ought to take a photo of this one. Looks a darn sight more like Our Lord than that oil spill outside the hotel Em got worked up about.”

  “It’s very good,” said the woman. “Striking.”

  “Thank you,” said Christopher. A notion occurred to him. He addressed the woman. “Tell you what, you're only small — hop on. Go on, have a go!”

  The man and woman moved on. Christopher sighed and worked on perfecting the pose.

  Joan recounted her previous conversation with Simon several times as they walked across Paris and, even to Francis, who had little grasp of the limitations of modern communication technology, it sounded incredible. By the time they reached the river, Joan had repeated herself so often and been totally unable to answer Em’s increasingly tough questioning that they had all become, by turn, perplexed, irritated and worn out.

  “It’s not my problem,” said Em, apparently her final word on the matter. “We’re going in here.”

  Francis looked at the sign of the Cafe Bouffon Aveugle and the narrow doorway. Paint peeled around the doorway and there was barely any light from within.

  “I am sure we can find somewhere better for lunch,” he said.

  “I’m meeting some people here.”

  “We can leave you if you need some privacy,” said Joan.

  “Not a chance. I don’t want you going off causing explosions, starting riots or bringing the cops to my door again.”

  “We’ve never done any of those —” Joan said and then stopped, recalling that they had done all of those things.

  “I’m keeping you close until tomorrow morning. We’re like glue until you’re on that train and out of my hair.”

  Em led the way inside.

  “Just keep quiet and be cool. These people respect me.”

  “Cool?” said Francis. “Like cold?”

  “Oh, Christ, you’re such dweebs. These people are important in the protest movement. Do not embarrass me.”

  The bar was decorated in varying shades of brown and smelled of tobacco and wood polish. Em spoke briefly to an unshaven man in an apron who pointed her towards a rear room. Em gestured for Joan and Francis to follow her. Past the kitchens was another room of dark wood tables and rattan backed chairs. There was a battered piano in one corner and, in another, the room’s only occupants.

  Em gave the two men the first unabashedly genuine smile Francis had ever seen on her face and kissed each firmly on the cheek.

  “These are my old friends, Frank and Joan,” said Em. “And these are my good friends, Claude and Michel.”

  “We have not met these friends of yours before,” said the narrow-faced Michel. “I do not like surprises.”

  Claude smiled, a grin of teeth so crooked, it would be a surprise that he didn’t eat his own face when he chewed.

  “You don’t like people, my friend. You forced me to write a risk assessment before you would come over to my apartment for dinner.”

  “That electrical fitting in the bathroom will prove lethal one day,” said Michel.

  The barman came in with a tray of bottles and glasses.

  Michel inspected the
glasses for dust before pouring wine for the five of them.

  “We had not expected to see you again so soon, Em” said Claude.

  “Amsterdam went tits up.”

  “Yes?”

  “That British cop.”

  “Mateus Rosé?”

  “Someone led him to my door,” said Em, her gazed pinned on Francis.

  “A bad business.”

  “I’m hoping that you might be able to find me a safe house for a month or two.”

  “Not Claude’s then,” said Michel with a wry, almost invisible smile.

  Francis sipped at the red wine. It wasn’t on a par with the communion wine in the Celestial City but was, nonetheless, quite palatable.

  “Here,” said Michel. “A toast. To old friends and good friends.”

  “Cheers,” said Em.

  “Salut,” said Francis.

  “And death to the oligarchs!” added Claude.

  “And proportionate and democratically sanctioned retribution against the oligarchs,” agreed Michel. “Em, we have plans for a protest action we aim to carry out in the next few days. I wonder if I could get your opinion on certain aspects.”

  “Careful,” said Claude. “He’ll have you doing a SWOT analysis within the hour.”

  In the salon grooming room, eight pens had been ripped open and eight poodles, spaniels and terriers, and one man-eating Wolf of Gubbio, lay exhausted amongst the wreckage of their love-making.

  The wolf yawned and stretched. It was time to move on.

  The blue-haired poodle sensed him moving and whined. The wolf looked at her, looked at them all. There could be no words between them and the wolf preferred it that way.

  What was there to say? The wolf had had his fun and no bitch was going to tie him down. He had a mission to complete, a master to find.

  The wolf jumped onto a counter and considered the high window in the corner of the room. It was shut, but it was only a single pane of glass. He backed up a foot or two and then leapt.

  “So,” said Claude, swinging round to talk to Joan and Francis. “How long have you known Em?”

  “Centuries,” said Joan.

  Claude laughed and topped up their glasses. Francis wasn’t quite sure how many drinks he’d had or how long they’d been in the café. Time and light barely seemed to impact on the place. The Parisian café was a pocket universe, totally separated from the rest of reality, and (although it might have been the wine doing his thinking) he was falling in love with the place.