Dial M for Merde Read Online Free Page B

starvation. Unlike you, you’re more than alive …’ Invigorated by a dose of fresh coffee, I tried to divert her attention from her screen to her erogenous zones.
    M, however, had a scientist’s ability to shut out everything in the universe that didn’t relate to her specialist subject. She planted a quick kiss on my forehead and then carried on with her fish show.
    â€˜For a while, exports from the Caspian Sea were banned by the UN, but they’re legal again now, which has just about condemned the beluga sturgeon to extinction. Sad when you consider it’s been around, almost unchanged, since prehistoric times.’
    She clicked open a photo of a baby sturgeon, only just big enough to fill the hand that was holding it. It was a scaly-backed, dinosaur-looking creature, a cross between a shark, a crocodile and a leech.
    â€˜Cute,’ I said.
    â€˜Millions of young sturgeon are introduced into theCaspian every year, but only about 3 per cent survive till sexual maturity, and they tend to be caught pretty well immediately after that. So you’re right – they are like models. As soon as they hit adolescence it’s all over.’
    I looked up at the frown crinkling M’s forehead and had to suppress a laugh. Not that I was indifferent to the tragic story of yet another of our planet’s species biting the dust because of human shortsightedness. No, it had suddenly struck me that this was like the start of a James Bond movie, with 007 getting briefed on the ins and outs of the bullion trade or diamond smuggling. I, though, was getting the lecture on sturgeon and caviar from a nude Bond girl instead of a pipe-smoking boffin. Who says 007 gets all the action?
    â€˜Which is why I’m down here,’ M concluded. ‘Beluga caviar is such a valuable commodity that it’s a prime target for counterfeiting. A clever dealer can make as much from fake Iranian caviar as from heroin. And fish eggs are totally legal until you put them in a tin with a fake label, so there’s infinitely less risk. Sturgeon are farmed legally in the south of France, but we suspect that the fake caviar is coming from fish being captured in the wild and then matured in secret offshore pens. These were spotted last year.’ She invited me to examine an aerial photo of faint shadows darkening the seabed.
    I nodded, although it could just as well have been a fleet of nuclear submarines or a family of lobsters out for an afternoon stroll.
    â€˜Who spotted them?’ I asked, punctuating my question with a squeeze of her bare inner thigh.
    â€˜My institute in the UK. But the photo leaked out, and the fish pen had gone by the time the French government reacted. I’m down here to pinpoint the sources of all thecounterfeit caviar that gets sold along the Riviera, and be a bit more discreet about my findings.’
    â€˜Great,’ I said. ‘Are we going to hire boats and spotter planes and go out looking for them?’
    â€˜No, not on this trip anyway,’ she said. ‘I want to have a snoop around, but officially I’m just going to try and convince the French oceanography institutes to help fund an aerial survey of the coastline. They say that it should be left up to the police. But we’re afraid that if the French police get involved, there’ll be another leak and it’ll all be a waste of time. Or they’ll just destroy all the illegal sturgeon. We want to save them, maybe even set them free from their illegal farms. If the environmental impact isn’t too heavy,’ she went on, apparently unaware of the impact of several male fingers that were now softly caressing the smooth, hot flesh of her stomach. ‘Because when sturgeon are left in peace, the population recovers remarkably quickly. In Florida, for example, the Gulf of Mexico sturgeon has got so common, and so big, that several boaters have been seriously injured in accidental