19

Calque climbed back inside Sabir’s Grand Cherokee. He spent a little time adjusting the driver’s seat forwards and upwards to meet his requirements. Then he stared at the gear shift. It was manual. Putain de merde. He had a feel around to work out what trick Chrysler had engineered to protect their reverse gear from inadvertent triggering. When he was satisfied that he had mastered it, he backed the car carefully out of the parking lot.

Next time, he thought to himself, we must think ahead – place the car facing out. For a possible quick escape.

No sooner had he formulated the thought than he shook his head wildly to and fro. What am I thinking of? What am I doing? I could be in France now, having dinner at La Reine Margot – cassoulet, followed by cheese and a tarte tatin. Washed down with half a litre of Brouilly and a café-calva to follow. Instead, here I am sitting in a strange car, in the northern part of the United States, and all I have inside me is the distant memory of a Wendy’s hamburger and so-called French fries, bought on the trot at a drive-thru so that we wouldn’t be vulnerable for more than six static minutes to the attentions of Lamia’s twin brothers.

Calque drifted onto the main drag. He looked neither to his right nor his left, counting on his peripheral vision to mark the twins’ car and to warn him of the lights of any oncoming vehicles. Yes. There they were. Parked right across the road from the motel, where they could cover the way out and all three motel rooms from the same tactical spot. Calque told himself that the very next time that he and his friends stopped for the night they must Definitely split themselves up in different geographical locations. That was the obvious answer.

He slapped the steering wheel in irritation. No. That wasn’t the answer. That wasn’t a clever idea at all. What they should really do is share a room. There was security in numbers. He wondered what Lamia and Sabir would think of that? Calque was aware that he was lamentably prone to snoring. His late assistant, Paul Macron, used to nudge him awake when they were in the car together, solving the problem like that. Maybe, now that no one was looking over his shoulder, he could buy himself a mask? Surely the Americans would have something on the market to deal with his problem? The last thing he wanted to do was to keep on reminding Lamia that he was in late middle-age, and more than a little out of condition. A man could rely on his wit and intelligence to captivate a woman during the day, but a little more finesse – not to mention realpolitik – was required, unfortunately, at night.

Not that Calque wished to seduce Lamia – far from it. She was thirty years his junior, and very nearly the same age as his daughter – the whole idea was grotesque. But it was clear that she needed protecting from Sabir’s continual litany of gaffes. The man was as unaware of the effect of some of his statements as a six-year-old child. Take that nonsense at the White Horse Inn. No Frenchman would have blundered in like that and drawn attention to the catastrophic blemish on a woman’s face in the first few moments of their acquaintance. No. It would take an American to promote such a faux pas.

Calque knew that Sabir had had a French mother, but he privately decided that she must have become Americanized very quickly indeed for a rustre such as Sabir to be the end product of her childhood educative influence. When it came down to it the man was as American as apple pie. His maternal French blood was clearly little more than an accident of history.

When Calque finally emerged from his daydream, it was to the realization that the twins were not following him. They had remained on station at the motel, just as he had anticipated.

Calque consulted his watch. Yes, the time was right. He made a left, and then another, until he was on the road parallel to that on which the motel was situated. Then he counted four blocks off in his head, following which he hung another left. Yes. This was it. This was the road they had agreed on after consulting the town map kindly provided by the motel management. Lamia and Sabir would be leaving their motel rooms by the back window about now. He was to give them twenty minutes to make their way the four blocks that separated them from the car.

He let the engine run. Best be prepared. There was always the chance that the twins would intervene early. In that case he must be prepared to hurry back to the motel and do what he could to save the situation. Call the police if necessary. Interpose himself between the twins and their victims. He laid the cell phone he had borrowed from Lamia carefully on the seat beside him.

Then he shook his head. What was he thinking of? He had never been a scrapper or a scrimmager – he simply wasn’t cut out for the rough stuff. In fact he found all physical exertion antipathetical in the extreme. Throughout the entire extent of his police career, Calque had never needed to unsheathe his pistol, far less use physical force on anybody. He had always had a plethora of willing – and more or less able – assistants for that.

Lancelot du Lac he was not.