Free Lost by Lucy Wadham Page B

his mouth.
    He took a small, spiral-bound notebook from his inside pocket. So rare were the occasions that he wrote anything down that he had had it for several years and it was not full. There were pages of notes from meetings with Central Office or with the magistrates. His attention always flagged and the notes were scant and impenetrable. On the last page was a diagram drawn by Monti, the only decentinformer he had ever had, the day before he was shot.
    Gérard and Paul Fizzi were the first to arrive. Gérard always climbed out of the car in the same way, first one foot, then his hand gripping the roof for leverage to haul out his bulk. Paul Fizzi followed behind. He was in his forties, but his tight jeans and tennis shoes made him walk like a teenager. Stuart pitied his trapped bollocks, which he was always nudging peremptorily. They shook hands, turning their backs to the wind. Paul stood with his feet apart, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, bouncing up and down against an imaginary chill. He grinned. ‘Ready to go?’ he said. Stuart smelled wine on his breath. Through his tan Paul looked pale. Stuart watched him take his cigarettes from the breast pocket of his jacket. His sleeves were rolled up and the veins stood out on his forearms. As he bent his head to light a cigarette, a lock of dark hair fell over his face.
    ‘Did you send the printouts?’
    Paul nodded as he drew on his cigarette. Stuart had given up. He considered the fact that smoking had been his only serious occupation. It was a cigarette he wanted, not a mint. He spat it out.
    ‘No good?’ Gérard said. Stuart took the bag of mints from his pocket and offered him one.
    Gérard looked at the mints.
    ‘No thanks.’
    The three of them stood waiting while Paul clicked his gold lighter on and off. He also had a gold wristwatch and a Laguiole knife with which he munificently cut bread for the department at lunchtime. Stuart had heard that these were all presents from women.
    The three of them watched the mayor approach. He was wearing a suit instead of his usual blue overalls. He cursed the maestrale apologetically as if he were responsible and shook first Stuart’s hand, then Gérard’s and Paul’s, without looking at them. Stuart remembered the mayor’s jumpy manner, which someone had once mistaken for the efficiencythat had made his reputation. He stood beside them, surveying the square. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, spat phlegm into it and put it back, repeating the action several times while firing questions at Stuart and not waiting for the answers.
    ‘You’ve got the old people’s clubhouse. That big enough you think? Who’s coming from the gendarmerie? Is it Morin? I haven’t met him. Who’s car is that, then? It’s the prosecutor’s.’
    Stuart could feel the mayor’s eagerness grow as they watched Van Ruytens park beneath the chestnut trees and climb out of his car. The 2CV he drove irritated Stuart – like the pipe and the tweeds and everything about him. He walked briskly across the square towards them, carrying his briefcase, his face to the ground. He shook Stuart’s hand vigorously and for a long time, his shoulders curved inwards and his chin jutting forward, faking earnest.
    ‘Well done for getting this thing organised so speedily, Stuart,’ Van Ruytens said.
    ‘I didn’t, Prosecutor. It was the gendarmerie.’
    Three CRS vans arrived and parked in a line behind the prosecutor’s car, blocking his exit. Van Ruytens watched, seemed to consider objecting, then decided against it. As the church clock struck the half-hour the gendarme, Morin, arrived at the head of four navy-blue buses. The mayor unlocked the room on the ground floor of the mairie with a large, rusty key.
    Stuart stood at the front and watched the men fill the hall. There was a strong smell of baking bread coming from the boulangerie on the other side of the wall, filling the room with the incongruously voluptuous smell of yeast.