Free The Diamond Caper by Peter Mayle Page B

electricity—he had mastered them all, and more. If you weren’t in a hurry, Coco had said, he could build you a house single-handed.
    It was Claude who had initiated them into the pros and cons of polished concrete for the floors and the virtues of
tadelakt,
a waterproof, lime-based plaster, for the showers. He was an authority on everything from carpentry to ironwork; he revealed the secrets of aging new stonework until it achieved an eighteenth-century complexion; he advised on the most effective protection of roof tiles from the brutal force of the Mistral. All this he passed on to Elena and Sam through a pungent haze of the cigarette smoke that came from his ever-present Gauloise while they pored, for the hundredth time, over the house plans that Coco had drawn up.
    Having had their architectural fix, Elena and Sam would have lunch at Chez Marcel, on the Vieux Port, and then go back to Le Pharo for a swim and a siesta before bringing Reboul up to date. In this way the days passed very pleasantly. Elena had almost forgotten what an insurance office looked like, Sam was working on his French, and they were both enjoying exploring the towns and villages along the coast.
    Having no pressing business to attend to—apart, of course, from the house—Sam found himself becoming more and more intrigued by what he had come to think of as a series of perfect crimes. These were the unsolved jewel robberies, such as the Castellaci heist that had cost Knox Insurance so dear. The work of professionals, Sam had no doubt, but how had they done it without leaving any clues? He wanted to find out more, and to do that he needed help: to start with, it would be useful to see and compare the police reports that had been filed after each of the unsolved robberies. Perhaps he could ask Reboul to persuade his friend Hervé to get hold of them.
    But idle curiosity wasn’t going to be enough to gain access to official police files. There would have to be another, more serious reason, and it came to him one afternoon while he and Elena were lying by the pool. It was time, he thought, for him to get himself a job, and he knew exactly where to get it. He leaned over and planted a kiss on Elena’s bare stomach to distract her from the copy of
Salut!
magazine that Philippe had given her.
    She looked at him over the top of her sunglasses, and smiled. “Is that a hint?”
    “Not exactly,” said Sam. “It’s a business idea.” And he took her through what he had in mind.
    At first, Elena was skeptical. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “You want me to get Frank Knox to hire you as his chief claims inspector in Europe?”
    “Temporary, and unpaid. All I want is a letter from him, on Knox stationery, instructing me to pursue all lines of investigation relating to the Castellaci robbery. He needn’t worry about the business cards; I’ll get those done over here. With them and the letter, I’ll have something official to show Hervé and his police buddies.”
    Elena shrugged. “Well, I guess it might work, and it won’t do any harm.”
    She dropped her magazine, put her hand on the back of Sam’s neck, and began to guide his head back down to her stomach. “Now, where were we?”
    —
    When Sam explained his idea that evening, Reboul was amused, and less skeptical than Elena had been. “It’s true, of course, that we French love official-looking pieces of paper. But, my dear Sam, what do you expect to achieve with all this?”
    “I’m not sure exactly. But as you know, professional crime has been a hobby of mine for years, and I find those robberies fascinating. Three of them, all perfect. Were they all done by the same guy? How did he do it? What did he do with the jewels?”
    “And you don’t think the police have asked themselves the same questions?”
    “I’m sure they have. But they don’t seem to have come up with any answers. Of course, it may be that these robberies weren’t big enough to be