Two months ago I signed off page-proofs for Confession, the fifth book in the Jacquot series, and returned them to my editor at Preface. After a year spent writing and editing, holed up in a drafty garden shed in the Cotswolds, suddenly the book's done, dusted, out of my hands. And after the usual post-partum low – a couple of lost, aimless days during which I think of all the things I could have written, should have written, but didn't – suddenly I'm free to pack my bag and head south again to research Jacquot's next adventure. It's as good a way as any to get rid of the blues and start afresh. So I've booked my flight to Marseilles' Marignane airport, hired a car and reserved my usual room in a small chambre d'hôte in Le Panier that's been home from home since the Jacquot series started.
I've been going to Marseilles for the best part of thirty years now, first as a travel writer heading off into Provence or the Languedoc to file stories with American magazines, but lately as a crime writer. As a travel writer, Marseilles was usually just a gateway – an overnight stop at the beginning and end of any number of different journeys and destinations. But as a crime writer, Marseilles is now the place I stay. And when I arrive - coming through that dusty arrivals hall at Marignane, or down those glorious steps outside Gare Saint Charles, or along the autoroute from Nice or Aix - there's a real sense of delight. I'm back in a city I've come to love.
For me there are two Marseilles. The first is the city itself with its slinking southern style, its familiar sights and comforting landmarks: the glittering blade of the Vieux Port, the steep jigsaw slopes of Le Panier, the boulevards of Canebière and République and the shadowy side-streets off them, and the winding pleasure of the coastal Corniche with the whale-back crags of the Frioul Islands just offshore. But then there's the other Marseilles, Jacquot's Marseilles, where he was born, brought up. Where he learned to pick a pocket in a crowd, steal fruit from a market stall, kiss a girl, ride a scooter, shoot a man.
That's how I see the city in Confession, and it doesn't take long to find. I may be travelling solo but as the days pass I become increasingly aware of Jacquot - walking beside me, sharing a pastis, guiding my steps. It's a strange, sometimes spooky, sensation. But always very pleasurable, for – in true Jacquot style – the progress of our day usually revolves around food. After a restorative café-calva breakfast at Café Samaritaine on a corner of the Vieux Port, lunch is what directs our steps: to La Coupole on rue Haxo (inside in winter, under parasols in summer - inside's best); or to Le Rhul or Chez Fonfon on the Corniche; or out of town, along the coast, to Chez Dédé, Tamaris, L'Escale or La Grotte.
All of these are favourite Jacquot haunts and all of them feature in the books, usually under their real names but sometimes disguised. Like the basement brasserie La Carnerie in Jacquot and the Waterman run by Gassi, the chef's wife - Fifty dressed as thirty, Gassi's smile was as wide as her hips and her skirt as short as her breath. Jacquot adored her; and she adored him right back. Or Chez Huit, where Jacquot gets a lucky break in Confession, a restaurant that doesn't appear in any guide book but is real all the same - the number eight referring to its position half-way down a sloping line of houses in the old quarter of Le Panier, overlooking a narrow rectangle of the Vieux Port... The elderly widow who owned the house and kept kitchen was called Tant'Anne, and every lunchtime, from Monday to Friday, she welcomed a shifting band of salty regulars and their guests.
And along the way, from table to table, whatever I see, I soon start to see from Jacquot's point of view. What would he think of those quarrelling fishwives on the Quai des Belges? How would he react to that pretty girl sitting alone in the sunshine outside Bar de la Marine on the Vieux Port? And what would he have to say about that man in the blue silk suit at Miramar, with a pair of hefty bodyguards (gorilles in the local slang) watching out for him as he spoons up his solitary bouillabaisse, napkin tucked into his collar?
It's much the same in Cavaillon where Jacquot was transferred after his debut appearance in Jacquot and the Waterman. My first stop is always Fin de Siècle, an opulently seedy bar on Cours Bournissac where Jacquot likes to end his day with a contemplative Calva. Every time someone pushes open the door I look up expecting to see him walk in; it's like waiting for an old friend to appear. And just as I climb the slopes of Le Panier to its topmost level on Place des Moulins, where Jacquot lives in Marseilles under the beady eye of his concierge Madame Foraque, so in Cavaillon I check out his apartment along the road from Auzet's where he goes for his morning coffee and croissant. Or I drive out of town on the road to Apt, looking out for the turning that leads to the millhouse he shares with Claudine. Sometimes, it's all so real - this relationship with a fictional character - that I wonder about myself. Maybe I should get help.
I first met 'Jacquot' ten years ago, not in Marseilles, not in Cavaillon, but in Barbados. He was French, his name was Michel and he owned a beachside restaurant called Ile de France, a bear of a man with long curling hair and a big smile who cooked as enthusiastically as he caroused. He taught my wife and I how to fricassée a rabbit and his rum punches were fabulously lethal. He had done his national service in France, spent a few years in the CRS, played rugby at club level and, I believe, had come to the Caribbean to follow the woman who became his wife. When I started thinking about Jacquot a couple of years later, it was Michel who came to mind - the colourful background, the sheer size of him and his unrelenting enthusiasm for life. I wish I could say that Michel had grown up in Marseilles, but to tell the truth I can't now remember his home town. What would be nice is to meet up again, so if you read this, Michel, do get in touch.
The first two Jacquot stories I wrote - Waterman and Angel - took a while to reach the bookshops. The one constant objection, from publishers and agents who were sent those first two manuscripts, was that Jacquot didn't fit the traditional stereotype role of a fictional detective. And that was not good. He wasn't a drunk, he wasn't divorced, he didn't have a drug problem, or children he never saw or didn't get on with, and there was never any sense in Jacquot of a brooding depressive introspection. Indeed, he was the complete opposite. He may have been a loner in police procedural terms, kicking against petty protocols and boorish bureaucratic restraints, but here was a man at ease with himself and the world around him. A cop who liked good music, good food and interesting women, blessed with an intuitive sense when something didn't quite add up.
Which is just as well. Since the Jacquot series is set in the 1990s there's not the same emphasis on technology - mobile phones, computers, or advanced forensic involvement. Rather, it's bloodhound work, and Jacquot's the bloodhound. The other good thing about setting the series in the 1990s is that it's France with francs not euros, a golden age when you could smoke in a bar, and Calvados didn't come with health warnings. Jacquot is not a drunk, but nor is he the kind of man who counts 'units'. What a horrible word. What a horrible concept. Jacquot would not approve.
Despite that 'stereotype' criticism - and the early rejections that came with it - I was determined not to compromise on Jacquot's character. And that's the character I've stayed with now through five books, not least because he's good company, and good fun to be with. It will be no different with book number six, which leads on directly from Confession. All I have at the moment is a working title, Blood Counts, and a sense that family honour and bloody revenge will feature strongly. As for the rest, well I'll have to rely on Jacquot. Another month, another trip to the south of France - maybe even as far as Corsica this time - and I'm pretty sure that my travelling companion will provide me with the bones of a new Jacquot adventure.
Confession is published by Preface
