Devil May Care

written report, so he had better at least get a feel for the Arc en Ciel and what went on there. Back in the office, he would look up the files on similar killings, check with Immigration and see if there was a pattern, or a reason for disquiet. An entire section of the Deuxième was devoted to the fallout of the French colonial wars. The eight-year struggle for Algerian independence had brutally divided not only Algeria but France itself and caused one political upheaval after another, finding a resolution only with the astonishing return to power of the wartime leader, General de Gaulle. Mathis smiled for a moment as he thought of Sylvie’s reverent look when she mentioned the great man’s name. And at the same time, even more shaming in an international sense, had been the defeat of the French army in Indo-China – or what now called itself Vietnam. The humiliation of the battle of Dien Bien Phu had burned itself into the soul of France, leaving a scar that had been hastily covered over.
    The only consolation, thought Mathis, was that the Americans now seemed hell-bent on meeting the same catastrophe. For him and his colleagues, however, Algeria and Indo-China had meant uncountable thousands of immigrants, embittered, violent and excluded, many of them criminals and some of them committed enemies of the Republic.
    Mathis methodically noted the layout of the block and the angle at which the killer might have approached the stairwell. He made other rudimentary observations more suited in his mind to the procedure of a local gendarme.
    He lit another cigarette, and went back down the stairs. He thanked the policeman and walked across the waste-ground to where the Citroën’s engine was still idling. ‘Take me to the morgue.’
    As the big car turned slowly, its headlights for a moment picked out a single figure in a ground-floor doorway. He wore a Foreign Legion kepi, and as the Citroën rejoined the road, he moved off swiftly, as though he’d now seen all he needed.
    At the morgue, Mathis waited for the attendant to gain authorization to show him in. He told the impassive driver to wait.
    ‘Monsieur,’ the man grunted, and returned to the car.
    The attendant came back with a pathologist, a senior-looking man with gold glasses and a neat black moustache. He shook hands with Mathis and introduced himself as Dumont.
    Checking and rechecking the numbers on the attendant’s sheet against those on the fridge drawers, Dumont eventually found what he wanted and hauled with both hands on the thick metal handle.
    It was a moment that had never ceased to give Mathis a frisson of excitement. The cadaver was already greyish, cold, and although it had been cleaned up, the face was a mess.
    Hashim looked like thousands of young Algerians who had come to a bad end. And yet…
    ‘Cause of death?’ said Mathis.
    ‘Single bullet, fired up through the roof of the mouth.’
    ‘But why the damage to the nose?’
    ‘He must have been beaten up first,’said Dumont. ‘But it’s not just the nose. Look at his right hand.’
    Mathis lifted Hashim’s clenched fist. There was a bloody piece of meat sticking out of it. ‘What the –’
    ‘It’s his tongue,’ said Dumont.
    Mathis lowered Hashim’s arm. ‘Why mutilate him when he’s dead? Some code or signal, do you think?’
    ‘They didn’t do it when he was dead,’ said Dumont. ‘I’m almost certain they did it when he was alive. Must have ripped it out with pliers or something.’
    ‘God.’
    ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
    ‘Haven’t you?’ said Mathis. ‘I have. It rings a bell. I’ve come across it somewhere … Somewhere. Anyway, thank you, Doctor. You can put him back now. I have work to do.’
    He strode down the corridor, through the lobby of the building and out into the rain. ‘Turn that awful Piaf racket off,’ he said, as he climbed into the car, ‘and take me to the office.’
    The driver said nothing, but switched off the radio, pushed the gear lever up into first and moved off with the inevitable squeal. It was just past two a.m.

2. A Voice from the Past
    It was a bright Sunday morning, and the pilgrims had gathered in their thousands in St Peter’s Square to hear the Pope address them from an upstairs window.
    James Bond dallied for a moment among the faithful. He watched their credulous faces crane towards the distant balcony and the light of joy that came into them when the old man spoke a few words in their own language. He