The Devil's Point

                                                              Chapter One

                                                                                             The Present Day

Only a few minutes left.

Emmanuel Malraux stepped backwards into the dark alley. He lowered his head but kept his eyes fixed warily on the long, gaunt face of the man framed in the doorway. The man’s eyes were hard and sad, he was tall and young, but weary, as if already drained by disappointments. And when he spoke, his face barely moved, a twitch and sneer of the lips, a slight rise and fall of an eyebrow. Malraux watched him intently, and it seemed to him that the sound of his voice came from deep inside the head through the bones and drawn flesh of his face.

‘Thirty-three Impasse de l’Ange. That will pay him,’ the man said.

‘It’s expensive.’

The man raised his arm then took hold of the door. ‘Goodnight, monsieur, I see you have plenty of money.’ The man shuffled back and slammed the door closed.

Malraux heard the metallic slotting home of numerous bolts. He dropped the small foil packet into his trouser pocket, stepped back and sniffed the air like an animal commencing the night’s hunt. The alley was dimly lit, but he could make out a strange metal sculpture protruding from the wall above the adjacent door. He moved closer and saw that it was the shape of a fish, wrought in iron. His head was wonderfully clear and the next second it was like liquid, running with connections and ideas. He heard a bolt slide open again behind the door, so he moved rapidly away, walking close to the wall towards the lights of a broader street.

He reached the end of the alley and stepped onto a pavement. He looked up to see a street name, Rue Falhière. The alley behind him was like a channel where the sounds reached him clear and separated; the scratching of a cat on a wooden frame and the light tap of a man’s footsteps. He crossed the street and headed towards the abbey. He had reached shops now: small secondary shops, a tobacconist, a tattoo parlour and a florist. He stopped at the window of a hairdresser, Camille’s, and looked at his reflection. He touched his cheek and ran fingers through his thick, dark, curly hair. He glanced back along the street and cocked his head slightly to one side like a listening animal. He thought he heard the clear resonant song of a nightingale piercing the air, but then again, perhaps that was just inside his head.

He walked on, looking for the Impasse de l’Ange, number 33, Cul de Sac of the Angel, he smiled. It was mid-September, but the night was already dark. The air was moist, and a breeze blew up from the river and ruffled the leaves of the plane trees in the square. There were footsteps, there was a car starting up, and he heard the raised voices of a man and woman calling to each other in a language he couldn’t understand. Or perhaps he could, but not tonight. There were definitely footsteps, but he couldn’t see from where they came. He walked around the square looking at the street names in the dull lights. Rue de la Chasse. He followed this narrower and darker street that he believed would lead to the church. The street lights were absorbed into the leaves and branches of the trees, filtered, leaving shifting shadows on the road. The footsteps were quicker. He stopped beside a plane tree on the edge of the pavement. He raised his head up and breathed deeply, he could smell the bark and the branches of the tree. The nearby church bells struck the first note of ten. By the tenth strike, he was dying quickly, blood flowing from his neck and ear into the dust between the cobbles and the edge of the road. A small paper wrapper blew along the gutter and stuck onto the congealing blood, and flapped over his silent lips.

Standing on the small stern deck of his canal barge, Jacques Lecoubarry heard the church bells chime ten times. The pale glow from a street lamp slid across the oily waters of the canal. He looked down and smelled the faint odour of used water and diesel; a familiar smell, a quiet town, moments of respite. He looked back through the window into the cabin where the woman sat so still, absorbed, striking and inscrutable. He watched her for a while, she didn’t look up or move. He shrugged his broad shoulders. A stroll, a small glass of Armagnac would fill that small space in the day that felt incomplete.

Bushes lined the towpath on the side of the canal where the barge was moored. He stepped off the boat between two bushes and onto the path. Without warning, a man, running, careered into him knocking him sideways. He grabbed at the man’s arm for balance and they swung around, almost falling. The running man was tall and lean, Jacques was tall but more solidly built and his bulk saved them both.

‘Pardon, monsieur,’ the man gasped, as he wrestled away from Jacques’ grip and started to run away, stumbling in his haste.

‘Hey, you should be more careful,’ Jacques shouted. ‘Be more careful when you run.’

But Jacques saw that he was not a runner, not a jogger nor a sports runner. He was wearing black trousers and a black, hooded sweatshirt. He pulled the hood back over his head as he ran off along the towpath. Jacques watched him go, past the lock and then onto the small footbridge that crossed the canal. As he reached the centre of the bridge he briefly looked back the way he had come. Too far away to see the details of his face, Jacques was sure of one thing, the face was white. The man came down off the bridge onto the path that led to the river and was out of sight. Jacques continued to stand there, a little shaken and uneasy. He looked along the towpath, listening. There was silence for a few minutes, and then he heard the distinct firing of an engine and seconds later, the sound of a motorboat pulling away from the shore. He listened for several minutes more until the sound of the boat grew muffled and faint.

Puzzled and annoyed. Jacques liked to describe things to himself in two or three words, particularly moods or the demeanour of people, he felt it helped him clarify and remember details: the woman in the barge, striking, inscrutable; the running man, rude, scared. This surprised him, he hadn’t been aware of fear until that moment. Rude certainly, but scared, and why was he running along the canal at ten o’clock at night? And was the boat waiting for him?

The desire for a small glass of Armagnac was becoming a need. He walked a little watchfully along the towpath towards the town, where he had earlier spotted a small canal-side café. There were a couple of scruffy, plastic, smoker’s tables outside on the pavement, and through the window, the interior looked dingy and drab. Perfect, he thought, as he pushed open the door. Leaning against the bar was a scrawny little man speaking rapidly in a strong accent and making extravagant gestures with his arms and hands. Jacques thought he heard him say something like;

‘It’s an invasion, we’ve been invaded, this town, not just this town, all over France, a bloody invasion.’

He stopped and looked around as Jacques entered. The other two customers in the café looked up too. It was not easy to ignore Jacques; apart from the height and breadth, it was the strong, leonine head with its swathes of grey-brown curls like a mane, the beard and moustache swirling around his thickish lips and nose, and the dark blue, unflinching eyes. He had a definite animal king of the jungle look, and people were often wary at first. Would he bite? Could you stroke him? Most people tried initially to stroke.

‘Good evening, monsieur. How are things going for you? From the boats?’ the barman asked.

‘Well, thank you. Yes, from the boats.’ Jacques replied. ‘An Armagnac… if I have time,’ he shrugged, ‘if there has been an invasion?’

‘Ah well, that’s just Michel. He is a…he is concerned about the number of Bulgarians who now live in the town,’ said the barman, shaking his head loosely.

‘Bulgarians?’

‘Yes, fruit pickers, farm workers, you know.’

‘Pick-pockets,’ interposed Michel, building steam for another outburst.

‘Now, Michel, enough. This gentleman doesn’t want to hear your rantings’

‘Tell me, friend,’ said Jacques, turning to look directly at the scrawny man’s eyes. ‘That’s a very serious accusation. Do you have any evidence of pick-pocketing or of any other crimes committed by these…Bulgarians?’

‘Yes, everyone knows. The Maire has taken on thirty new police to deal with this wave of crime,’ said Michel, and looked away.

‘Michel, its twenty new police,’ said the barman, ‘and the crimes are not just Bulgarians. There are drugs and…your cognac, monsieur.’

‘Thank you,’ said Jacques. ‘And how many Bulgarians are in this invasion force?’

‘Nobody knows for sure,’ said Michel. ‘Too many.’

Jacques shrugged and sat down at a table in the corner. Michel walked out of the café and the barman raised his hands and mouthed an apology in Jacques’ direction. There were so many issues to think about, so many uncertainties, so much baggage, so much personal cargo being carried along in the sturdy hull of his boat, the Incognito. He didn’t think he needed to spend too much time worrying about the Bulgarian invasion.

Available on all Amazon stores worldwide, as an E-book to download or as a paperback. Available as an E-book on all Draft2Digital Stores; KOBO and FREE to read on Kobo Plus; Now also as an audiobook on Apple Audio.

Click on the buttons to go directly to your store of choice.