The French Confection Read Online Free PDF Page A

The man with the camera got in and a moment later they were roaring past us. I just caught a glimpse of the driver, smoking a cigarette with one hand, steering with the other. Then they were gone.
    Tim had already walked into the hotel. Feeling increasingly uneasy, I followed him in.
    We took the key from the squinting receptionist and took the stairs back to the top of the hotel. There were a lot of them and the stairway was so narrow that the walls brushed both my shoulders as I climbed. Finally we got to the last floor. Tim stopped for breath. Then he unlocked our door.
    Our room had been torn apart. The sheets had been pulled off the bed and the mattress slashed open, springs and enough hair to cover a horse tumbling out onto the floor. Every drawer had been opened, upturned and smashed. The carpet had been pulled up and the curtains down. Tim’s jackets and trousers had been scattered all over the room. And I mean scattered. We found one arm on a window-sill, one leg in the shower, a single pocket under what was left of the bed. Our suitcases had been cut open and turned inside out. We’d need another suitcase just to carry the old ones down to the bin.
    Tim gazed at the destruction. “I can’t say I think too much of room service, Nick,” he said.
    “This isn’t room service, Tim!” I exploded. “The room’s been searched!”
    “What do you think they were looking for?”
    “This!” I took out the packet of sugar. Once again I was tempted to open it – but this wasn’t the right time. “This is the only thing Chabrol gave us back at the station. It must be the object that Bastille was talking about.” I slid it back into my pocket, then thought again. It seemed that Bastille was determined to get his hands on the sugar. I wouldn’t be safe carrying it. It was better to leave it in the hotel room. After all, they’d already searched the place once. It was unlikely they’d think of coming back.
    I looked around, then slid the sugar into the toilet-roll in the bathroom, inside the cardboard tube. Nobody would notice it there and the police could pick it up later. Because that was the next step.
    “We’ve got to call the police,” I said.
    “We’ve just come from the police,” Tim reminded me.
    “I know. But if they see our room, they’ve got to believe us. And as soon as they’re here, I’ll show them the packet. Maybe they’ll be able to work the whole thing out.”
    I looked for the telephone and eventually found it – or what was left of it. You’d have to be an expert at electronics or at least very good at jigsaws to use it again.
    “Why don’t we talk to the man downstairs?” Tim asked.
    I thought of the squinting receptionist. Only that morning he’d been talking to the man in the grey suit, the one who’d just taken our photograph.
    “I don’t trust him,” I said. At that moment I wouldn’t have trusted my own mother.
    Tim held up a short-sleeved shirt. It had been a long-sleeved shirt when he had packed it. He looked as if he was going to burst into tears. At least he could use the rest of the shirt as a handkerchief if he did.
    “Let’s go back down, Tim,” I said. “We can call the police from the lobby. I noticed a phone booth.”
    “What’s the French for 999?” Tim asked.
    “17,” I replied. I’d seen it written next to the phone.
    But the phone in the hotel was out of order. There was a sign on the window reading
“Hors de service”
. I translated for Tim and he went over to the receptionist. “We want to call the police,” he said.
    “Please?” The receptionist narrowed his eye. I think he would have liked to have narrowed both his eyes, but the one on the left wasn’t working.
    “No,” Tim explained. “Police.” He saluted and bent his knees, doing an imitation of a policeman. The receptionist stared at him as if he had gone mad.
    “Les flics,”
I said.
    “Ah!” The receptionist nodded. Then he leant forward and pointed. “You go out the