Read Online Dial M for Merde by Stephen Clarke - Free Book Online

pronunciation of ‘esturgeon’. I made it sound too like ‘detergent’.
    â€˜Ay-stoor-djo?’ I tried again, and this time she understood.
    â€˜No, we never do them,’ she said. ‘The company only prepares anchovies and sardines. We sell other fish, but they’re imported. From Brittany and places like that.’ She was apologetic. I could see that she was telling the truth. ‘Why do you want sturgeon?’ she asked.
    â€˜I want to buy different fish,’ I explained. ‘It’s for the wedding of a friend. Ten kilos of the white anchovies, and maybe some other fish, too.’
    â€˜Ten kilos of anchovies? I’m not sure they will like that. Why don’t you get them a vase or a lamp?’
    â€˜No, it’s not a present. I’m the caterer.’
    Probably for the first time in hours, she stopped pulling fish to bits. She held her hands up in the air, closed her eyes and enjoyed a long, shoulder-shaking fit of the giggles. I could only assume that her days of sitting here alone with the anchovies were so dull that the thrill of meeting a caterer had been too much for her nervous system.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ she finally said, and her fingers got back to work. ‘But you said that you are the traître . You mean the traiteur . You see the difference?’
    I managed a short laugh of my own. I’d mispronounced caterer and called myself ‘the traitor’.
    Proof yet again that I definitely wasn’t cut out for espionage.
    6
    It was just after seven in the evening.
    I was walking down from the hotel to the harbourfront. At the foot of the castle walls, a group of men were drinking pastis and playing pétanque, the game invented by Frenchmen so that they don’t have to help with the cooking.
    Floodlights were throwing a sheet of white light over the battlements, and I thought about the girl I’d seen walking up there. I wondered if it really had been her at the restaurant. After our eyes met, she hadn’t looked at me again, and I had made an effort not to stare at her. But now I half hoped to see her again.
    I was on my way down to the row of cafés near the beach, Collioure’s favourite evening drinking spot. If she was sitting alone, I would go over and ask her – why had she been risking her life at the top of the wall?
    I couldn’t see her, so I chose an empty seat on the front line overlooking the beach, swivelled my neck like a crazed owl until I managed to attract the attention of one of the fast-moving waiters, and ordered myself a glass of red Banyuls. Carbon footprint practically zero on that wine, I congratulated myself. It could almost have been delivered on foot.
    The sun had gone down behind the town, but it was still high enough to glare bright gold in the windows of the houses on the headland opposite me.
    Yellow street lights wound left out of sight, following the coast road south to Spain. Banyuls was two or three bays further down. M was due back from there at around eight. I was to meet her at the café. On the phone, she’d sounded tense, as if the talks with her fellow scientists had gone badly again.
    I felt my pocket vibrating. I’d received a couple of text messages.
    The first was from Elodie: ‘ Val coming 2 Collioure 2 find u and talk. He will call. Give him kiss from me. ’
    OK to all of that, I thought, except perhaps kissing her fiancé.
    The second message had been sent from a long international number starting with a plus sign.
    â€˜ Being on place in person maybe its easy for you to get money from strange affairs. ’
    I recognized the unique style of non-verbal communication. Or rather verbal non-communication. This had to be from my friend Jake, the American who’d gone to Louisiana to try and help the Cajuns learn French again. Meanwhile, it seemed that they’d been helping him to unlearn English.
    I called him back and asked him to explain what