‘The snake and the egg are well drawn,’ said Byrd. ‘The girl’s a damn poor show though.’
‘The foot is out of drawing,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘It’s not well observed.’
‘A girl that could do that would have to be a cripple,’ said Byrd.
Still more people crowded into the room and we were being pushed closer and closer to the wall.
Loiseau smiled. ‘But a poule that could get into that position would earn a fortune on the rue Godot de Mauroy,’ said the Chief Inspector.
Loiseau spoke just like any police officer. You can easily recognize them by their speech, to which a lifetime of giving evidence imparts a special clarity. The facts are arranged before the conclusions just like a written report, and certain important words – bus route numbers and road names – are given emphasis so that even young constables can remember them.
Byrd turned back to Jean-Paul: he was anxious to discuss the painting. ‘You’ve got to hand it to him though, the trompe l’œil technique is superb, the tiny brushwork. Look at the way the Coca-Cola bottle is done.’
‘He’s copied that from a photo,’ said Jean-Paul. Byrd bent down for a close look.
‘Damn me! The rotten little swine!’ said Byrd. ‘It is a bloody photo. It’s stuck on. Look at that!’ He picked at the corner of the bottle and then appealed to the people around him. ‘Look at that, it’s been cut from a coloured advert.’ He applied himself to other parts of the painting. ‘The typewriter too, and the girl …’
‘Stop picking at that nipple,’ said the woman with green eye-shadow. ‘If you touch the paintings once more you’ll be asked to leave.’ She turned to me. ‘How can you stand there and let them do it? If the artist saw them he’d go mad.’
‘Gone mad already,’ said Byrd curtly. ‘Thinking chaps are going to pay money for bits cut out of picture books.’
‘It’s quite legitimate,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘It’s an objet trouvé …’
‘Rot,’ said Byrd. ‘An objet trouvé is a piece of driftwood or a fine stone – it’s something in which an artist has found and seen otherwise unnoticed beauty. How can an advert be found? How can you find an advert – the damned things are pushed under your noses every way you look, more’s the pity.’
‘But the artist must have freedom to …’
‘Artist?’ snorted Byrd. ‘Damned fraud. Damned rotten little swine.’
A man in evening dress with three ballpoint pens in his breast pocket turned round. ‘I haven’t noticed you decline any champagne,’ he said to Byrd. He used the intimate tu. Although it was a common form of address among the young arty set, his use of it to Byrd was offensive.
‘What I had,’ interrupted Jean-Paul – he paused before delivering the insult – ‘was Sauternes with Alka Seltzer.’
The man in the dinner suit leaned across to grab at him, but Chief Inspector Loiseau interposed himself and got a slight blow on the arm.
‘A thousand apologies, Chief Inspector,’ said the man in the dinner suit.
‘Nothing,’ said Loiseau. ‘I should have looked where I was going.’
Jean-Paul was pushing Byrd towards the door, but they were moving very slowly. The man in the dinner suit leaned across to the woman with the green eye-shadow and said loudly, ‘They mean no harm, they are drunk, but make sure they leave immediately.’ He looked back towards Loiseau to see if his profound understanding of human nature was registering. ‘He’s with them,’ the woman said, nodding at me. ‘I thought he was from the insurance company when he first came.’ I heard Byrd say, ‘I will not take it back; he’s a rotten little swine.’
‘Perhaps,’ said dinner-jacket tactfully, ‘you would be kind enough to make sure that your friends come to no harm in the street.’
I said, ‘If they get out of here in one piece they can take their own chances in the street.’
‘Since you can’t take a hint,’ said dinner-jacket, ‘let me make it clear …’
‘He’s with me,’ said Loiseau.
The man shied. ‘Chief Inspector,’ said dinner-jacket, ‘I am desolated.’
‘We are leaving anyway,’ said Loiseau, nodding to me. Dinner-jacket smiled and turned back to the woman with green eye-shadow.
‘You go where you like,’ I said. ‘I’m staying right here.’
Dinner-jacket swivelled back like a glove puppet.
Loiseau put a hand on my arm. ‘I thought you wanted to talk about getting your carte de séjour from the Prefecture.’
‘I’m having no trouble getting my carte de séjour,’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ said Loiseau and moved through the crowd towards the door. I followed.
Near the entrance there was a table containing a book of newspaper clippings and catalogues. The woman with green eye-shadow called to us. She offered Loiseau her hand and then reached out to me. She held the wrist limp as women do when they half expect a man to kiss the back of their hand. ‘Please sign the visitors’ book,’ she said.
Loiseau bent over the book and wrote in neat neurotic writing ‘Claude Loiseau’; under comments he wrote ‘stimulating’. The woman swivelled the book to me. I wrote my name and under comments I wrote what I always write when I don’t know what to say – ‘uncompromising’.
The woman nodded. ‘And your address,’ she said.
I was about to point out that no one else had written their address in the book, but when a shapely young woman asks for my address I’m not the man to be secretive. I wrote it: ‘c/o Petit Légionnaire, rue St Ferdinand, 17ième.’
The woman smiled to Loiseau in a familiar way. She said, ‘I know the Chief Inspector’s address: Criminal Investigation Department, Sûreté Nationale, rue des Saussaies.’2
Loiseau’s office had that cramped, melancholy atmosphere that policemen relish. There were two small silver pots for the shooting team that Loiseau had led to victory in 1959 and several group photos – one showed Loiseau in army uniform standing in front of a tank. Loiseau brought a large M 1950 automatic from his waist and put it into a drawer. ‘I’m going to get something smaller,’ he said. ‘This is ruining my suits.’ He locked the drawer carefully and then went through the other drawers of his desk, riffling through the contents and slamming them closed until he laid a dossier on his blotter.
‘This is your dossier,’ said Loiseau. He held up a print of the photo that appears on my carte de séjour. ‘“Occupation,”’ he read, ‘“travel agency director”.’ He looked up at me and I nodded. ‘That’s a good job?’
‘It suits me,’ I said.
‘It would suit me’, said Loiseau. ‘Eight hundred new francs each week and you spend most of your time amusing yourself.’
‘There’s a revived interest in leisure,’ I said.
‘I hadn’t noticed any decline among the people who work for me.’ He pushed his Gauloises towards me. We lit up and looked at each other. Loiseau was about fifty years old. Short muscular body with big shoulders. His face was pitted with tiny scars and part of his left ear was missing. His hair was pure white and very short. He had plenty of energy but not so much that he was prepared to waste any. He hung his jacket on his