Chez Max by Jakob Arjouni

were closing for the night, the aperitif bars were beginning to empty and the restaurants were filling up.
    I thought for a moment of Chez Max and wondered whether to call again and say I probably wouldn’t be in at all this evening. But then I decided that my absence wasn’t going to be any particular surprise to my staff, most of whom had been there for years. After all, not so long ago I was often away from the place all evening. But a point came when I was tired of inventing new Mireilles and Ninas in the interests of my Ashcroft investigations, and meeting my employees’ risqué queries and comments with the same meaningful smile. Especially at times when the only Mireilles and Ninas with whom I had any contact – well, contact of a kind – were those I’d stored in the sexomat. Quite possibly that was even the main reason for the neglect of my Ashcroft work. It had been so undignified to be teased all day about some romance or other, and then at night – often after hours spent alone in the windy entrance to some building – to climb into the sexomat suit behind carefully drawn curtains. So I had begun to cross the occasional suspect off my list, then all cases in which the likelihood of success seemed slight, and so on, until criminals actually had to drop from the sky in front of my feet before I would pay them any attention.
    And on this mild spring evening it wasn’t likely I’d be spared one of the head waiter’s little quips, such as ‘Ah, the merry month of May, Max our boss wants a good lay’.
    So instead of listening to silly jokes, I tapped the number of the Ashcroft Agency Localization Office into my mobile. Every Ashcroft agent had a tiny transmitter through which he could be located precisely by satellite anywhere in Europe, to the square metre. If you didn’t have the transmitter with you and were caught without it, you needed very good reasons to escape disciplinary measures. Officially the system was ‘for urgent cases’, but first and foremost, of course, it was for checking up on us. No wonder that the idea came from Self-Protection.
    A woman’s voice answered the phone. ‘Ashcroft Localization Office, my name is Bonnet, may I ask you for voice identification, please?’
    I recited the password employed for the purpose, quoting the wording of the Treaty of Europe: ‘Liberté, égalité, sécurité.’
    A few seconds later the woman replied, ‘Good evening, Monsieur Schwarzwald. What can I do for you?’
    â€˜Good evening. I’m looking for my partner Chen Wu, eleventh arrondissement.’
    â€˜Would you tell me your reasons, please?’
    â€˜It’s about a group of illegals living in a building in our area of operations. We’re after the people-smugglers who got them in, and just now it looks as if the illegals are about to leave the house. I need Wu to help me keep them under surveillance.’
    â€˜Why don’t you call him?’
    â€˜I’ve tried, but he must have switched his telephone off. I only wanted to know if he’s anywhere near just now. Then I could get hold of him in a hurry.’
    I very much hoped the woman wasn’t too quick on the uptake and wouldn’t ask for Chen’s number, so that she could check what I said. Getting information out of the Localization Office was always a dodgy business. If it wasn’t a genuine emergency, they were quick to suspect you of trying on something a little crooked with whoever you were looking for. It was a fact that agents quite often tried cornering annoying colleagues that way, or even ruining their lives by surprising them in delicate situations. Generally there was sex of some kind involved.
    â€˜I should tell you that I’m putting your reasons on record.’
    â€˜Of course.’
    I didn’t suppose that Chen would be applying to see the localization records over the next few days. And