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neck.
Later, when he began to ask his questions, getting down to business after the bright and insignificant chatter over drinks at the Sofitel and on the cab ride to the restaurant, she'd answered politely and concisely, holding nothing back. Everything that Carnot had told him - about her background, how she'd got into the business - she repeated it all with never a blush nor a stammer. She knew the score and she was looking to move up, she told him. They could rely on her. She wouldn't let them down.
Raissac nodded. Of course, of course. Sizing her up.
She was young and pretty with a flinty edge he rather liked. And if she didn't match up, or tried getting smart like the last one, there were plenty more where she came from. By the end of their meal he'd decided she'd do very nicely indeed. A perfect choice.
There'd been only one more piece of business to attend to.
Back at his apartment.
'You want another, help yourself, and then skedaddle,' said Raissac wearily, reaching down beneath the sheet to coddle his balls.
The girl had been stepping into her panties and pulling them on, but left them where they were, mid-thigh, and moved over to the chest of drawers where he'd left the kit. She looked faintly ridiculous, shuffling around the bed like that, panties at half-mast, but when she leant over to cut the line he'd offered, Raissac changed his mind. Not ridiculous at all. And she knew it, stretching her hindquarters out at him as she snorted up the cocaine, wriggling her hips like a dog wagging its tail.
A good arse for spanking, he decided, and no mistake.
With a sigh, Raissac changed his mind a second time. 'Stay like that,' he told her, 'just stay like that and—'
    He was halfway across the bed, reaching out a hand, when the buzzer sounded.
     

11
     
At three, as agreed, Jacquot went up to the third floor
of police headquarters on rue de l'Eveche. At the top of the stairs he bumped into Corbin, one of Sallinger's Vice boys. He was dragging a plastic sack crammed with video-cassettes across the landing.
'Gastal? Any ideas?' asked Jacquot.
The fat one?' Corbin reached forward and pushed the button for the lift.
Jacquot smiled. That's him.'
'Down the end, last on the left,' said Corbin with a sour look. 'And you're welcome to him
When he reached Gastal's office, Jacquot tapped on the door jamb and looked in. The man had his feet on his desk and a box of dates in his lap. Licking his fingers, Gastal tossed the dates onto his desk and struggled out of his chair.
'We'll talk and drive,' said Gastal, bustling past Jacquot and heading down the corridor to the lift. 'Your car. I got something I need to check. Over near the Opera.
Shouldn't take long. You mind?'
Five minutes later, with Gastal buzzing down the window and sliding his elbow out, they turned past the striped flanks of the Cathedrale de la Major and set off down Rue de l'Evêché. There was a hold-up a hundred metres ahead on the corner of rue du Panier, so Jacquot took the scenic route, working the wheel and gears through a maze of sun-starved alleyways with only a few inches to spare either side of the wing mirrors. Above them the tenement balconies were strung with washing. Peering up, Jacquot remembered his own clothes hung out to dry. Even now he could still hear the squeak of the pulley as his mother strung them out across the street like a set of flags on the mast of a ship - the short trousers, the shirts, socks and, most embarrassing, his underpants. Back then, he was certain everyone would know the underpants were his.
'You know your way around,' observed Gastal as they rejoined du Panier a half-dozen blocks past the hold-up.
'Years of practice,' replied Jacquot.
'More of the old stuff here than Toulon, and that's for sure,' said Gastal. 'So, what you got on the boil anyway?'
'Three homicides. All women. Spread around. The first two in Marseilles, a third up near Salon-le-Vitry. Rully and I reckon they're related.'
'Related?'
'Water. All three drugged,