Dial M for Merde by Stephen Clarke Page B

pleased.
    â€˜What’s this merde?’ He slammed my statement down on the desk. ‘You’re here with your girlfriend. Why did you lie?’
    Oh shit, so it had been a game of good cop, bad cop, and I’d fallen right into the trap.
    â€˜If you know I’m heterosexual, why do you tell me I’mgay?’ I asked, a question that was confusing enough to stop the bad cop in his tracks and make him frown.
    â€˜Why are you here in Collioure?’ he demanded, plonking down on the seat opposite me. ‘Answer!’ He was calling me ‘tu’, as if I was a child or a poodle, and he bawled this at maximum volume. I jumped.
    â€˜I’m just—’
    â€˜We know who you are! We know why you’re here! You’re the Englishman come to fuck the merde in France!’ A rough translation.
    â€˜No, I—’
    â€˜Shut your mouth!’
    I did so, but this only enraged him more.
    â€˜Your girlfriend, what is she doing?’ he shouted.
    Oh shit, I thought, they’d found out about her attempts to prove that the French authorities weren’t doing enough to clamp down on caviar piracy and save the sturgeon.
    â€˜She’s trying to help France,’ I said.
    â€˜Help France?’ He looked as though he was about to have a convulsion.
    â€˜Yes, the …’ Dammit, how did you pronounce the word for sturgeon? The commando had said it only minutes ago. What a time for my French to let me down. It had to be the stress. ‘The big fish.’
    â€˜The big fish?’ He suddenly looked serious. ‘You know where the big fish is?’
    â€˜No, not exactly. But maybe here on the coast.’
    â€˜He’s not French, is he?’ It sounded as if the cop was talking about a man, but of course the word for fish, poisson , is masculine in French, so they refer to it as ‘he’.
    â€˜I think now he lives in France, in the Camargue, maybe.But originally, he was from Iran. Or Russia, no?’
    â€˜Iran or Russia? Putain!’ The cop sank back in his chair and gazed into space.
    The door burst open again, and a new official face appeared, looking just as angry as the leather-jacketed cop had done. This guy, though, was a uniformed gendarme with lots of braids and tags that seemed to suggest authority.
    â€˜You,’ he growled. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ To my surprise, he was saying this to the cop, not me, and calling him ‘tu’ into the bargain.
    â€˜What?’ The leather-jacketed cop looked as though he couldn’t believe anyone would dare to talk to him like this.
    â€˜This is my station, and I’m ordering you to get out. Now!’ The braided guy didn’t back down.
    â€˜You know who this is?’ Leather Jacket was pointing at me.
    â€˜Yes, and he’s my prisoner.’ It sounded as if I’d just been auctioned off on eBay. I didn’t like to think what for.
    â€˜Ecoute, mon vieux.’ Leather Jacket stood up and appealed to the other guy’s sense of solidarity. ‘Let’s talk. You – don’t move.’ He seemed to think I might go wandering off in search of a new shirt.
    They went outside for a confab, and the solidarity came to a swift end. Voices were raised, threats exchanged and one of them was forced to back down, yelling all the while that it wasn’t the end of the matter. I wondered who had won, and where it was all leading. All I’d done was go for a drink on the beach, and now I seemed to be at the centre of a tug-of-war between two rival police departments, one specializing in sexual orientation and the other in the nationality of endangered fish.
    The door opened, and Leather Jacket walked in, looking rabid.
    â€˜You and me, we haven’t finished,’ he snarled, pointing a pistol-like finger in my face. And then, to my surprise, he left, slamming the door behind him.
    Almost immediately, the braided officer walked in. Time for