Rip Tide

And then almost before she could blink they reached Paris. In the fresh sunlight of the spring evening it seemed to her the most beautiful city in the world. Not even the noisy jostling crowd on the platform of the Gare du Nord could sour things. And when the Metro slowed for Saint-Fargeau, her stop on the north-east outskirts of Paris, her pulse quickened at the prospect of the weekend ahead.

She crossed a busy road, then went down a side street. As she approached a now-familiar house, she saw the other tenant, Madame Beylion, come out of the front door. She was a stout, elderly lady with a face set in deceptively dour lines, for she was in fact the kindest of souls.

‘ Bonjour, Madame Beylion,’ Liz called out, much more confident speaking in French than she had formerly been.

‘Ah! Bonsoir, Madame.’ The old lady waved and smiled. ‘ Monsieur est à la maison. Il vous attend. ’

Upstairs the door opened just as Liz was about to ring the bell. ‘Telepathy,’ she said.

‘I saw you through the window,’ Martin Seurat replied with a grin, and they both laughed. Then he gave her a big kiss. He’d changed out of his work clothes, and was wearing a dark blue Lacoste polo shirt and cotton trousers. With its regular features and dark deep-set eyes his face was at once handsome and a little forbidding – until he smiled, and his eyes lit up.

Martin was in the DGSE, MI6’s French counterpart. Liz had met him on the same Northern Irish investigation that had led to her association with Isabelle. It had turned out that her quarry was a former colleague of Martin’s in the DGSE, a man called Milraud, who had become an arms dealer. As the operation had proceeded the immediate mutual attraction had strengthened between Martin and Liz, and after the operation had ended they had gone off together to a small hotel in the Provençal hills, where in the early Mediterranean spring they had unwound in each other’s company.

Now, a year on, what Liz had thought of at first as a fling had turned into… what exactly? She didn’t know or care to analyse it too deeply. She was just happy with it as it was, and their arrangement certainly fitted in well with her current job. Martin’s flat had become her temporary home when, as quite often happened, work took her to Paris.

On her first visit to this flat, Liz had been taken by surprise. She had been expecting a smart bachelor pad in a central district of Paris, somewhere very different from the comfortable apartment in a handsome house in the 20th arrondissement, which was where he actually lived. She knew him better now. The quiet, wide square shaded by plane trees, the friendly neighbours, the local shops where they seemed to have known M. Martin for years, all fitted his personality much better than the minimalist apartment she had imagined.

This evening they had a simple supper in the little alcove off his kitchen, while they caught up with each other’s news. It had been almost a month since they’d last seen each other apart from the brief meeting at the press conference. Martin’s daughter, who lived with his ex-wife two hundred kilometres away, was taking the Baccalauréat this year and applying to the Sorbonne. He was pleased at the prospect of soon being in the same city as his daughter.

‘By the way,’ he said as he cleared their plates from the table, ‘there’s been news of our old friend from Porquerolles.’

‘Milraud?’ Liz asked in astonishment.

‘Not Antoine,’ said Martin, as he came back from the kitchen. He filled her glass with the last of the bottle of Beaune they had shared. ‘His wife, Annette. She was spotted in Versailles, of all places, but by the time we heard about it, she’d disappeared.’

‘I’m amazed she risked showing her face in France.’

‘She has always loved the high life. Hiding out with her husband in one of the new Soviet republics would have palled for her very quickly. I am just hoping that Antoine has come with her. Then we’ll get him,’ Martin said with a hint of steel in his voice.

They moved into the sitting room; Liz stood by the window, holding her glass, looking out at the little square across the street. The hour’s time difference with England meant dusk was starting to fall, and a small circle of old men were finishing a last game of boules. Small powdery explosions of dust flew up each time a player carefully tossed a heavy silver-coloured ball.

‘A little Armagnac?’ asked Martin.

‘No, thanks. I’ll just finish my wine.’

‘So you’re seeing Isabelle on Monday?’

‘Yes. We’re going to compare notes – as she said, there wasn’t much time at the conference to go into detail.’

He nodded, but didn’t ask any more questions. Early on in the relationship they’d established an understanding about discussing their work, which meant never enquiring in any detail about what the other was doing.