Monsieur Pamplemousse on Probation Read Online Free PDF Page A

been about to say, and pressed a button on his meter instead. The standing charge went up. There was a price to pay for everything, especially wet bloodhounds making their presence felt.
    Having executed a U-turn, they drove in silence back down the hill from Montmartre. Monsieur Pamplemousse wasn’t too sorry. He had other things on his mind and Pommes Frites looked equally happy to be left to his own devices as he attended to his ablutions.
    After waiting for the lights at the bottom, they headed east along the rue Clignancourt, eventually meeting up with the boulevard Barbès, where they joined the stream of traffic heading south.
    There was something odd about the whole thing. Normally, the details, the booking of a taxi and the arrangements for picking up the new car, would have been left to Véronique, but he had a feeling she knew nothing about it. She certainly hadn’t mentioned it when he’d arrived at the office the previous morning. It had been all commiserationsabout his trip to Boulogne: a case of ‘there, but for the grace of the good Lord, go the rest of us, as we probably will in the fullness of time.’ The Director must have taken care of the whole thing himself.
    He’d phoned through later in the day. ‘Make sure you reach Roanne soon after two o’clock, Pamplemousse’ had been his parting shot. ‘And don’t worry about filling in a P49. Let me know how much it all comes to and we’ll work it out when you get back.’ It could only mean he must be wanting to keep it from Madame Grante as well.
    Doucette had been characteristically blunt about it. ‘You mark my words. He’s up to something. It doesn’t add up. He must have known about the car for some while. The business about your going into hiding only came up yesterday. It’s like Jules always says: “Nine times out of ten when people enquire the price of a house on behalf of a friend, it’s for themselves but they don’t want to let on.”’ Doucette’s brother was an estate agent.
    The rain, which had seemed set for the day, began to ease as they crossed the Seine via the Pont Notre Dame; umbrellas were still up, the
gendarmes
standing guard outside the Préfecture de Police sheltered inside their plastic sentry boxes, but by the time they reached the fringes of the fourteenth
arrondissement
it had stopped altogether.
    Dividing his time between negotiating the trafficin the Place Denfert-Rochereau and studying a pocket street guide spread out across his steering wheel, the driver paused for a moment to exchange unpleasantries with the driver of an articulated
camion
, then he pointed up at the sky. A tiny shaft of sunshine had broken through a gap in the clouds.
    The whole episode having clearly put him in a better mood he slowed down to a more leisurely pace, made a right turn, then a left followed by another right, and moments later pulled up alongside a row of anonymous buildings, mostly shuttered to the outside world.
    ‘Is this it?’ Monsieur Pamplemousse looked in vain for the familiar black on yellow insignia of a Renault agency. All he saw was a yellow Twingo parked on the pavement outside a nondescript building which could have housed practically anything.
    ‘It is the address you gave me,
Monsieur
.’
    Monsieur Pamplemousse read the inscription on the card as the driver handed it back to him. He hadn’t given it more than a passing glance before, now he wished he had. Years in the Paris
Sûreté
had taught him to be wary of anyone calling themselves an Import-Export agency. In his experience the words were suspect in any language.
    Paying off the taxi he collected his baggage and approached the Twingo. The door on the driver’sside was locked. Ever curious, Pommes Frites joined him, rested his paws on the bonnet, then nearly jumped out of his skin as a metallic voice barked out: ‘STAND CLEAR. SYSTEM ARMED.’
    The sound brought a man wearing a white coat hurrying out of a side door. He was carrying a