Read Online Folly Du Jour by Barbara Cleverly - Free Book Online Page B

it. Talking unguardedly amongst themselves, they would often reveal useful bits of information but Joe intended to play no such deceitful tricks on this occasion. Too much at stake. He wanted to raise no hackles. And he wanted no reluctant English-speaking officer with a sketchy knowledge of the case to be pushed forward to handle the communications. Direct access to facts and theories was what he wanted. A face-to-face talk with the martinet. But mostly what he wanted was a chance to see Sir George.
    His taxi driver, impatient with his progress on the boulevards, took a chance and nipped down the rue de Richelieu, emerging on the rue de Rivoli at the Comédie Française. They skirted the busy area of the market place, unimpeded. The thick traffic from the supply barges on the Seine to the Halles Centrales had been over with some hours before. A right turn at the crossroads of Le Châtelet took them over the bridge and on to the Île de la Cité. And into the ancient heart of the city.
    Joe checked his watch with the ornate clock on the side of the Conciergerie as they turned off the quai. The old prison of Paris had the power to make him shudder even on a spring morning. The arrogant grandeur of its exterior, its pepper-pot turrets flaunting a military past, hid an interior of dismal rooms and thick walls soaked in sorrow. Prison, law courts, police headquarters, medieval hospital, the most magnificent Gothic cathedral in the world – all crowded on to this small, boat-shaped island in the Seine, its prow pointing downstream to the sea. Joe constantly expected it to sink under the enormous weight of its cargo of stone architecture.
    Five minutes to eight and they were on the island. He’d do it.
    What time did the shows end at the Champs-Élysées? About ten? So poor old George had been banged up in the cells for ten hours. Probably had a worse night than he’d had himself. Joe was surprised that he was still in custody. Such was the man’s presence, strength of character and charm, Joe would have expected the flics to have bowed him out with an apology and an offer of a lift back to his hotel in a police car. A passing unease tugged at him. At any rate, with his talent for putting everyone at ease and getting precisely what he wanted, George would probably be discovered holding court in his cell and ordering up breakfast.
    His taxi passed the imposing Law Court building and dropped him outside the police headquarters. He made his way through to the small courtyard where he counted ten police cars and two paniers à salade , empty of prisoners , lined up on the cobbles. Joe wondered briefly as he walked by whether George had been brought here in one of these Black Marias with their metal grilles. They trawled the streets bringing in a nightly haul of vagabonds, thieves, knife-wielding Apaches and other villains. George would not have much enjoyed their company.
    Bonnefoye was waiting by the policemen’s entrance. The two men greeted each other ruefully. A painted sign announced: Direction de la Police Judiciaire. Escalier A it added over an unimpressive door. Ancient, narrow and battered, it would not have looked out of place in any Paris back street. The stone slab under the door was worn to a hollow in the centre, witness to the thousands of nailed boots that had clumped their way over the threshold during the centuries. Nostalgically, Joe placed his Lobb’s black half-Oxford right in the centre. Putting down a marker for Scotland Yard. Marking out new territory.
    Bonnefoye looked at him through bleary eyes. ‘What a night, eh? I’ve seen you look sharper!’
    ‘Do I look as bad as you do, I wonder?’
    ‘Twenty years worse!’
    Bonnefoye pushed open the door and hesitated. ‘Are you ready for this?’ he asked. ‘It’s a hundred and forty-eight steps up to the fifth floor. And no lift! But I think we may find out what we want to know by the third floor.’ The building smelled rather unpleasantly of new paint,