Paris Noir: Capital Crime Fiction by Dominique Sylvain, Michael Moorcock, Jerome Charyn, Jason Starr, Cara Black, John Williams, Barry Gifford, John Harvey, Scott Phillips, Stella Duffy, Maxim Jakubowski, Jean-Hugues Oppel, Dominique Manotti, Sparkle Hayter, Jake Lamar, Jim Nisbet, Romain Slocombe

angular features and heavy body gave him the air of a large amiable dinosaur. Begg knew his opposite number had one of the sharpest minds on the Continent. Single-handedly Lapointe had captured the ex-police inspector turned crook: George Marsden Plummer (alias ‘Maigret’ in France) who had once been Lapointe’s chief. Lapointe had also been the one to bring ‘Fantomas’ to book at last. Together he and Begg had tracked down ‘Jock Collyn’, otherwise known as The Master Mummer, and been instrumental in his lingering to this day on Devil’s Island. Inspector Bardot, on the other hand, had no spectacular record, but was much admired at the Quai des Orfèvres for his methodology and his coolness under pressure. Small, dark, he seemed permanently and privately amused. He wore a buttoned three-piece grey suit and what was evidently an English school tie.
    The two Home Office men had come from London via the recently opened Subchannel Excavation, whose roads and railway lines now connected the two nations, a material addition to the decades-old Entente Cordiale, an alliance which had been cemented by the signing of a European-wide Mutual Co-operation Pact, which, with the Universal Civil Rights Act, united all the Great Powers, including the Confederated Forty-Seven States of America, in one mighty alliance, sharing common laws and goals.
    ‘Perfectly, thank you,’ said Begg, speaking excellent French. Lapointe had put the STP’s private express at his disposal. The journey had taken less than an hour and a half from London to Paris. ‘I must say, Lapointe, that you French chaps have your priorities well in hand – rapid and comfortable transport and excellent food among them. We had a superb lunch en route.’
    The French detective acknowledged this compliment with a small self-deprecating shrug.
    Taffy, taller than the others, murmured his own discreet appreciation.
    ‘I gather, Dr Sinclair, that you are recently back from the Republic of Texas?’ Lapointe courteously acknowledged the pathologist, whose expertise was internationally famous.
    ‘Indeed.’ Sinclair removed his wide panama and wiped his glistening head with a large Voysey-patterned Liberty’s handkerchief, which seemed an uncharacteristic part of his otherwise muted wardrobe. Save for his taste in haberdashery, nobody would have guessed that during his time at Oxford he had been a leading light in the post-Pre-Raphaelite revival and that women had swooned over his massive head of hair and melancholy features almost as much as over his poetry. Like his friend and colleague, he wore a cream-coloured linen suit, but whereas Begg’s tie was a rather flamboyant bow, Sinclair’s neck was adorned by his old school colours. Indeed, his tie was identical to Bardot’s. The two had been contemporaries at Blackfriars School and later had attended the Sorbonne before Bardot, eldest son of a somewhat infamous Aquilonian house, entered the service of the Quai d’Orsay and Sinclair, after a spell in the army, decided to follow his father into medicine and the civil service.
    ‘You are familiar with the shopping arcades which radiate off the Place de L’Opéra?’ murmured Lapointe once they were strolling down a broad avenue of chestnut trees towards the Gardens’ rue Guynemer entrance. ‘And you are aware, I am sure, of the reputation the area has at night, where assignations of the heart are pursued and men and women of a certain inclination are said to come together.’
    ‘I have read something of the place,’ said Begg, while Taffy nodded gravely.
    ‘These arcades are the most complex in Paris, of course, and extend into and beneath the surrounding buildings, in turn becoming a warren of corridors and suites of chambers connected to the catacombs. They have never been fully mapped. It is said that some poor devils have been lost there for eternity, cursed to wander forever beneath the city.’
    Begg smiled. ‘I am familiar with Smith’s Kitchen in