Rough Trade (25 page)

The little windowless office was crowded with people. Soleiman had just reached rue des Maraîchers. He was drinking coffee at the little stall further down the corridor. He was happy.

A Turkish worker came to see him.

‘My name’s Yavouz. The boss owes me 6,000 francs. He sacked me a few days ago and doesn’t want to pay me. The Committee must help me.’

‘Have you got proof?’

‘Proof, what proof? I work illegally, I’ve never had a payslip.’

‘Let’s go. But not on our own.’

Fifteen or so Turks set off in a group and knocked discreetly on the workroom door. The boss, who wasn’t suspicious, opened it. Peaceful invasion, led by Yavouz. The boss, who was a Yugoslav, shouted insults and tried to snatch a pair of scissors to defend himself. Two workers came close to stop him. The tension dropped a notch.

‘You owe Yavouz 6,000 francs.’

‘That man? I’ve never set eyes on him. I’ll call the police.’

He grabbed the telephone and got the commissariat. He spoke French very badly. The man at the other end didn’t understand a word of what he was saying.

‘Isn’t there someone around who can speak French better?’

‘Yes.’

‘Put him on to me.’

The boss handed the telephone to Soleiman, who explained: labour dispute, unpaid wages.

‘Is there any fighting?’

‘No, none.’

‘Very well, sort it out,’ said the duty officer finally, and hung up.

‘The police won’t come,’ said Soleiman to the boss.

‘Yes they will.’

‘Very well, let’s wait for them.’

Everyone settled down, they played draughts, someone went to get coffee. The boss drank some along with everyone else.

Two hours later the boss realized the police weren’t coming. After all, maybe he did know Yavouz. He even remembered him. He’d worked there the week before. They began to negotiate. The boss offered 1,000 francs in cash at once. 3,000, no less. 2,000? OK for 2,000. Agreed. Yavouz was delighted. Everybody left. The boss watched them go downstairs. Goodbye, Monsieur Committee.

Soleiman was drinking coffee with four workers, two men and two girls, from rue des Maraîchers. The others had stayed behind to occupy the workroom.

Gribsky arrived accompanied by a flamboyant Lebanese, Hammad, who had parked his Mercedes on the pavement in front of the main door to the church. He stroked the girls’ cheeks, called them darling, and took bundles of banknotes out of his black dispatch case.

The telephone rang. A Turk.

‘Is that the Committee? Come quickly, rue d’Hauteville … The boss wants to sack a Turk.’

‘Impossible for me to come now, call back later.’

Hammad owned fashion boutiques in the Sentier and on the Mediterranean coast. He was tempted by the adventure of
production
. Intense discussions about the price of the machines, the stocks of finished garments, the back pay owing, the lease. No written document, no accountancy statements. In the end Gribsky, Hammad and the workers came to an agreement. A settlement was drawn up by Hammad, countersigned by Gribsky, the workers and Soleiman, on behalf of the Committee. Bundles of notes changed hands. Everyone went to celebrate at the local café, ogling the Mercedes on the way.

Soleiman went back to the office. Telephone.

‘It’s the Turk in rue d’Hauteville. OK, it’s sorted out, no need to come.’

‘And how was it sorted out?’

‘Well, the boss had attacked the worker on the head with a pair of scissors, the worker then cut his hand, right through. The
manageress
called the police The boss said it was an accident, the cops left. Both men are in hospital and the boss has said that the worker would keep his job.’

Sener was going up the avenue from the Rond-Point towards the Lido, accompanied by two members of the embassy staff. He was much too preoccupied to enjoy the good weather. He was in trouble on all fronts. On Monday Paulette had been arrested, the police asked the embassy for permission to question him and his political friends reproached him vehemently for compromising himself in various forms of trafficking which didn’t serve the cause … On Tuesday Paulette’s husband, a senior police inspector, was also arrested. Today he himself had an appointment in a few moments’ time in an attempt to negotiate his withdrawal from business
affairs
and his return to Turkey. It was going to be difficult.

Marinoni was also walking up the Champs-Elysées a short
distance
in front of Sener, while Romero was following him, his eyes fixed on Sener’s back. A group of Italian youths were larking about in a kind of game, concealing Sener from him for a moment. Romero tried to get closer. When he saw Sener again he had collapsed on the pavement and his two companions were bending over him with a puzzled expression. Romero rushed forward. Sener was lying face down, with a bullet hole below his left shoulder blade, while a pool of blood was beginning to form in the gutter. Romero stood up, looked round everywhere, saw only people
walking
along and Marinoni running towards him. He asked Sener’s two companions what had happened but they indicated that they didn’t speak French.

Romero left Marinoni waiting for the police to arrive and ran to a telephone box.

‘Hullo, Daquin speaking.’

‘
Commissaire
, Sener has just been shot in front of me, in the street, and I didn’t see a thing.’

‘Where are you?’

‘In the Champs-Elysées.’

‘You’ll have to cope, Romero. Find a press photographer quickly. There are newspaper offices in the area. I want touching
photographs
of the dead man. Paulette’s custody has only got
twenty-four
hours to run. Don’t waste any time.’

The first sets of papers requesting legalization were starting to come in and the little office was overcrowded. Each dossier was examined. If it was complete it was photocopied, the Committee kept the copy and filed it. The worker only went to deposit the dossier at the Immigration Office after that had been done. In this way the Committee could really keep an eye on all the
administrative
decisions, case by case. A lot of work. But Soleiman took it on with enthusiasm. He felt useful and powerful. Not afraid at all. The telephone never stopped ringing. Two Turkish militants took it in turn to reply to the requests for information.

‘Soleiman, for you. A new strike.’

It was Hassan, one of the pillars of the Committee, on the line. He’d been working for a few days at LVT, a big workroom with sixty or so workers, all clandestine, more or less. Yugoslavs, Africans, thirty or so Turks. A Yugoslav boss, Jencovich. That morning the Turks had asked him for work contracts to establish their legality. In reply the boss sacked them. The Turks remained sitting in front of their machines, doing nothing. If they got up they would be replaced by Yugoslavs.

‘The foreigners are continuing to work as though nothing’s
happening
,’ said Hassan. ‘You’ve got to come, it could turn violent.’

Soleiman looked for help from the people around him.
Telephone
, files, everyone was busy. There was a queue in the corridor outside the Committee’s door. Too bad, I’ll go on my own.

High up in rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, near the overhead
railway
, past the Bouffes du Nord theatre, Soleiman went up to the third floor and entered the workroom. He’d never seen such a big one, six rooms, all looking on to the street. Otherwise a tangle of cables, machines, neon lights like everywhere else. At the very
moment
he went in a fight broke out between Turks and Yugoslavs. One Yugoslav collapsed with a scissor wound in his thigh. Carnage was imminent. The boss, Soleiman and the Africans intervened. The scissors fell onto the tables again. Two Yugoslavs laid the
injured
man down in another room.

Jencovich telephoned the Superintendent of the 10th
arrondissement
and then turned to Soleiman: ‘I warn you, I’ve called the police. I know the Superintendent. He’ll be here any minute. He’ll send all the Turks out of here. I employ the people I want to employ. And I don’t want that lot any more. And as for you, you’ve no right to be here.’

Soleiman suggested a discussion. Useless.

Sirens. Soleiman looked through the window. Three police
minibuses
, together with Police-Assistance, stopped outside the
entrance
to the building. Thirty or more cops in uniform got out as well as three men in plain clothes. They all rushed into the
building
and could be heard running up the stairs. Soleiman went pale.

The police came into the workroom. Three of them went to see to the injured Yugoslav and took him away on a stretcher to the hospital. The others spread out through the workroom and checked the distance between the two communities. A plainclothes cop, a short, thickset man, well over fifty, seemed to be in charge of the operations.

Soleiman spoke to him: ‘I’m here on behalf of the Committee …’

‘Shut up, you. I didn’t speak to you.’

Then he took the boss by the arm and led him into the
apartment
on the other side of the landing.

Soleiman asked the Turks in the workroom to explain what was happening. They laughed. The apartment opposite belonged to the boss. The Superintendent knew him well because he came every Friday at noon to have sex with the boss’s wife, a French blonde, precisely in the apartment opposite. The boss and the
Superintendent
were great buddies. The boss paid, on top of that the Superintendent fucked his wife, there were never any police checks in the workroom, the business flourished …

The Superintendent came back again, followed by the boss, who looked rather sheepish. A quick order, a sign to his cops who split up and stood along the three sections of the staircase. Only the plainclothes men and two in uniform remained in the workroom.

‘This scrap is over now. Nobody’s been sacked. Everyone back to work, at once. If anyone mentions a work contract I’ll get him banged up immediately. Did you hear what I said? As for you, you bloody fool,’ he caught hold of Soleiman by his hair before he realized what was happening, while the two plainclothes men twisted his arms behind his back, ‘I recognize you. I saw you Monday morning in passage du Désir. You won’t come back to my district playing Zorro again. You’re going to go out of here on your hands and knees and we shan’t see you again, got that?’

He dragged him over to the staircase and pushed him down, head first, while one of the cops tripped him up. Soleiman hit the banisters hard. A cut over his left eye blinded him with blood. He tried to get up by groping at the banisters. Two blows with a
truncheon
on his hands. A kick in the small of his back. He tumbled down to the second floor landing where a cop in uniform got him to his feet with a kick on his jaw. A blow on his right temple covered his eyes with a veil of blood, and blood filled his mouth. He was pushed down the staircase again, tried to roll into a ball and reached the first-floor landing. Someone pulled him up by the collar and kicked him in the crotch, he heard himself scream. Couldn’t breathe any more. He was dropped onto the staircase and sent down by kicks in the ribs. A hellish noise inside his head. Heard a voice in the distance saying ‘Don’t kill him’.

The lower half of his body was crushed. I can’t even crawl. He felt himself lifted and carried … A door banged. He was put down on a platform, couldn’t straighten his legs. Wet towels to wipe the blood from his face. A terrible pain in his chest. He still couldn’t breathe but he made out two silhouettes bending over him.

‘Who are you?’ Barely a murmur.

‘You’re safe, you’re in the theatre. We heard screaming. We rushed into the entrance, we picked you up. As soon as the cops have gone we’ll take you to the hospital.’

Soleiman began to breathe gently in short gasps. Painful.

‘Not to the hospital. My place.’

‘But you need treatment.’

A pause while he got his breath back.

‘There’s someone at my place who can give it.’

‘Where’s your place?’

‘Avenue Jean-Moulin, in the 14th.’

Daquin hadn’t seen Paulette again since Monday. Found that she was cracking up. He rose to give her a chair.

‘Romero, describe what happened in the Champs-Elysées a short time ago.’

Romero described it, clumsily. Paulette froze, white-faced. When Romero had finished Daquin pushed towards her two large
photographs
of Sener lying dead, one showing him as he had fallen, his face turned to the left, the other showing him from the front, stretched out on his back. Daquin let time pass. Paulette looked at the photographs for a long time. Without moving. Then she passed her hand gently over the dead man’s face.

‘Who killed him?’

‘A hired killer from the Turkish gang of drug traffickers for whom he worked.’

‘Why?’

‘So that we couldn’t question him. Paulette, did you know that he worked for that gang?’

‘No.’

‘So why did you repeat to him everything your husband told you?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ A long silence. Paulette remained motionless. ‘No doubt I didn’t realize what I was doing. I thought we could run our joint affairs better.’ Another long silence. ‘And then I loved him.’ Pathetic.

‘Will you agree now to answer a few precise questions?’

She removed her hand from the photographs and turned her head towards Daquin.

‘Go on. I no longer have anyone or anything left to shield.’

In less than an hour everything was sorted out. The counterfeit labels: produced in Turkey, brought over in the diplomatic bag. Much less risky than having them done in France. The amount of the profits, the Swiss bank account, the retailers who sold things on. And the long confidences from her husband. (He doesn’t like you, Daquin.) Everything that she passed on to Sener. Paulette seemed outside time. There was only one question that mattered, and she tried in vain to find the answer within her memory: had Sener loved her, or had he merely used her?