The Woman in the Fifth (30 page)

I now knew why I had been kept waiting over ninety minutes. They were running a computer check, comparing my prints with those found at the crime scene.

'I used that brush to clean the toilet,' I said.

'And you've just interrupted me again.'

'Sorry.'

'So you quarreled with Monsieur Brasseur. You quarreled with Monsieur Omar. But you befriended Monsieur Adnan. Was your friendship
just
a friendship?'

'What are you implying?'

'Once again, the peculiarity of the story is fascinating. Consider: an American comes to Paris and falls sick in a hotel. Nothing unusual about that. But then the same American meets a young Turkish gentleman in the hotel – and before you know it, he takes over his
chambre de bonne
. Now that is an unusual narrative twist,
n'est-ce pas
?'

I raised my hand. He nodded that I could speak.

'If I could explain . . .'

'Off you go.'

I took him through everything that happened at the hotel, and how Adnan had looked after me, and how hearing that I was short on funds—

Now Coutard interrupted me.

'Because you had lost your job and had to flee the States after your tragic affair with your student?'

A long pause. I wasn't surprised that he knew this – but hearing him confront me with this fact still unnerved me.

'Your detective work is most impressive,' I said.

'It must have been a great tragedy for you, losing your professorship, your family, your
maîtresse
.'

'Her death was the worst aspect of it all. The rest—'

'I saw all the press coverage – courtesy of Google. May I say something which is perhaps beyond my professional concern? As I read about your downfall, I actually felt sorry for you. So what if she was your student? She was over eighteen. She was not coerced. It was love, yes?'

'Absolutely.'

'The fact that everyone accused you of trying to make her have an abortion—'

'I never even knew she was—'

'You do not have to plead your case with me,
monsieur
. As far as I'm concerned, you were a victim of a very American inability to accept moral complexity. It all must be black and white. Right and wrong.'

'Isn't that what a police officer deals with all the time?'

'All criminal action is fundamentally gray. Because everyone has a shadow . . . and everyone is haunted. Which leads me to another curiosity about this case: your whereabouts at night. Monsieur Sezer told us you were usually out until dawn, and slept in most days until the early afternoon.'

Sezer was evidently doing his best to shop me – for reasons best known to him. Did he have Omar bumped off? Was that why he was trying to pin it on me?

'I'm a night owl, yes.'

'So what do you do all night?'

'Often I simply walk, or stop in an all-night café and write on my laptop. But many nights I am at home.'

'But the owner of the
boulangerie
on the rue du Faubourg Poissonnière informed us that you arrive every morning just after six to buy two
pains au chocolat
. You do this without fail six mornings a week.'

'I am a man who likes to stick to a fairly strict routine.'

'Do you work somewhere at night?'

'Only on my novel.'

'The novel that has yet to find a publisher?'

'Yes, I am an unpublished writer.'

'Perhaps that will change.'

'It will.'

'I admire your self-belief. But I can't wholly believe that you simply walk all night or spend time writing in a twenty-four-hour café. Which café might that be, by the way?'

'I use several,' I said, wondering if he could hear the lie in my voice.

'So which ones exactly?'

'There's this place in Les Halles called Le Tambour. And there's also the Mabillon on the boulevard Saint- Germain—'

'That's a long way from your
quartier
.'

'Half an hour on foot.'

'If you walk fast.'

'All right, forty-five minutes if you're limping. As I told you, I like to wander at night.'

'You're a
flâneur
?'

'Absolutely.'

'Might you also be a
flâneur
who holds down a full-time job?'

'I don't have a
carte de séjour
.'

'That has never stopped the vast majority of
immigrés
from working here. Professionally speaking, I don't care at all if you are holding down illegal employment or not. I am investigating a murder. As you are "of interest" to us, I simply want to find out your whereabouts on the night of the murder.'

'As I said, I was—'

'Yes, yes, strolling the streets of Paris like Gene Kelly.

May I say that I don't believe you. I know you are hiding something. Clarity,
monsieur
, is essential now.'

Why didn't I tell him about the all-night job? Because I might also be implicated in whatever was going on downstairs.

And it still wouldn't clear me of suspicion in the death of Omar. Who would vouch for me being in fulltime employment?

Nobody.

'I am hiding nothing, Inspector.'

His lips tightened. He tapped two fingers on the desk. He reached for the phone. He swiveled around in his chair and spoke in a low voice. Then he hung up and swiveled back toward me.

'You are free to go,
monsieur
. But I must inform you that we will be keeping your passport . . . and that I advise you not to leave Paris.'

'I'm going nowhere.'

'We'll see about that.'

T
HEY'RE FOLLOWING ME
.

Now I was sure of this. Just as I was also sure that it was only a matter of time before they found out where I worked at night, and raided the place.

Someone's on your tail.

Had an innocent passer-by seen me on the street, he would have thought,
That man is mad.
Because I had developed the paranoid habit of turning around every two minutes or so to see who was behind me. This was no neurotic knee-jerk response that only lasted a few hours after I was allowed to leave the
commissariat de police.
No, this became a full-blown tic – and one which was difficult to control. Every two minutes – one hundred and twenty seconds exactly (I was counting it down in my head) – I had to spin around and try to surprise the gumshoe who was shadowing me.

But no one was ever there.

That's because they know how to make themselves vanish . . . to duck into a doorway as soon as they see you twirling around.

Several times, this abrupt pirouette nearly landed me into trouble. An elderly African woman – using a walker to help her negotiate the Faubourg Saint-Martin – screamed when I spun around. I apologized profusely, but she still glared at me as if I was delusional. The second time, the victims were two young toughs. They were both around twenty, of Arab origin, dressed in tight leather jackets and wearing cheap sunglasses. Their initial shock was quickly replaced by umbrage and aggression. Immediately they grabbed me and shoved me into a doorway.

'What you fucking doing?' one of them hissed.

'I thought you were the cops.'

'Stop talking shit,' the other said. 'You thought we were following you, right?'

'I honestly didn't think—'

'Racist asshole, thinks we're a couple of sand niggers, wanting to jump him for his cheap watch.'

'I meant no disrespect. I—'

'Yes, you did,' the first said, then spat on me. Simultaneously the other guy shoved me hard, knocking me off my feet.

'You do that again to us,' he said, 'we cut you the next times.'

But as soon as I had picked myself up and wiped that man's spittle from my jacket and headed off down the street, I still found myself turning around every two minutes.

I'm sure they're there. I'm sure they're watching me at all times.

When I left the
commissariat
, I decided to do what I always do whenever life overwhelms me: I hid in a movie. (Come to think of it, I hide in a movie even if I am finding things moderately cope-able.) There was a Clint Eastwood festival at the Action Écoles – so I caught
The Beguiled
(Wounded Civil War veteran ends up in a house of spinster women, starts sleeping his way through them, and pays a horrible price for his sexual profligacy . . . I must have been insane to have chosen this movie – especially as I had seen it twenty years earlier and therefore vaguely remembered what I was letting myself in for.)

Afterward, it was time for work. Now I turned around every minute, reducing this to thirty seconds as I approached the alleyway and the steel door, behind which . . .

I spun around. No one there. I walked back to the intersection of the alley and the street. I looked both ways. No one there. I walked back down the alley, turning one last time. No one there. I opened the door and locked it behind me. I went up to my office, knowing that tonight I wouldn't get a single word written . . . that I would be watching the monitor nonstop, just in case anyone suspicious poked their head into the alleyway, looking around.

My eyes hardly left the monitor for the entire six hours of my shift. Somewhere toward the end of the night, the thought struck me,
You're a little unhinged by all this.
To which the only reply could be,
Being under suspicion for murder does strange things to one's psyche.

When I left my work at six, however, I did discover someone waiting at the end of the alley for me. It was Sezer's stooge, Mr Tough Guy. He blocked my path as I approached him.

'Monsieur Sezer wants to see you,' he said.

'At this hour?' I said, trying to appear cool – even though I was suddenly anything but cool.

'He is awake.'

'I need to sleep.'

'You sleep afterwards.'

'I'd like to stop by the
boulangerie
and pick up—'

He had me by the arm.

'You come now,' he said.

So back we went to my building and up the stairs to
Sezer Confection.
Himself was seated behind his desk, sipping a demitasse of coffee.

'You keep early hours,' I said.

'I don't need much sleep,' he said. 'Unlike you.'

'How do you know that?'

'You come home every morning at six ten, six fifteen the latest, after stopping at the
pâtisserie
for two
pains au chocolat
. You sleep until two p.m. You pick up your wages at the Internet café on rue des Petites Écuries. You generally eat at a café near the canal Saint-Martin or the Gare de l'Est. You spend most of your days at the movies – though every few days, you pay a visit to someone on the rue Linné in the Fifth. A woman, I presume?'

'You've had someone following me?' I asked, my voice just a little shrill.

'We simply like to monitor our employees' movements . . .'

'
Our employees.
Am I working for you?'

'Put it this way: we are all working for the same organization.'

'And what organization might that be?'

'You surely don't expect me to tell you that.'

'Well, how about telling me why you told the cops that I killed Omar?'

'I never said such a thing. I simply informed them, under interrogation, that you'd had an ongoing dispute with Monsieur Omar about the condition of the toilet.'

'
Under interrogation?
You make it sound like they were beating you with a rubber hose.'

'Like most people, I am not at ease when in conversation with the police.'

'You tried to set me up . . . tried to finger me as the killer as a way of deflecting attention from—'

He raised an index finger and said, 'I would stop right there if I was you,
monsieur
. I dislike accusations.'

'Even though you think nothing of making false accusations against other people.'

'The police have nothing whatsoever on you—'

'Except a motive – courtesy of you – and my fingerprints all over the toilet brush.'

'Fear not. The evidence is weak.'

'I'm their prime fucking suspect.'

'There will be no problem – this I can assure you – as long as you do what you are told.'

'By which you mean . . . ?'

'You tell the police nothing about your work, no matter how hard they press you—'

'I wouldn't dream of—'

He raised his finger again to silence me. Why was everybody doing this?

'And you also don't do anything idiotic like try to run away.'

'The cops have taken my passport.'

'That has never stopped anybody from fleeing. False passports can be bought in this
quartier
for two hundred euros maximum.'

'I'm going nowhere.'

'I'm pleased to hear that. Because it would be very problematic for you if you did try to vanish. Not that we would allow you to vanish . . . unless, of course, you made us make you vanish.'

A small tight smile from Monsieur Sezer. I could feel the sweat cascading down my neck.

'Do you understand what I am telling you, Monsieur Ricks?' he asked.

I nodded.

'Very good. Then if you understand that, you must also understand that your movements are known to us at all times. Continue with your life as it is – your bookshops, your movies, your cafés, your woman in the Fifth, your work at night – and, I assure you, there will be no problem. Try to make a run for it – head to some railway station or attempt to purchase false documents – and the response will be fast and brutal. Are we clear about that?' I nodded again. He said, 'I need to hear you say, "I understand."'

'I understand.'

'Very good. I also want you to assure me that, if the police approach you again, you will inform me immediately about their line of questioning.'

'You have my assurance,' I said, sounding like a complete flunky. Though I wanted to add,
If you're so worried about me going to the cops, why the hell did you finger me as the prime suspect?
But I knew the answer to that question:
By putting me under suspicion, he could appease the police and also keep me in his control.

'Then we are in complete understanding?' he asked.

'Yes,' I said.

'Excellent. One last thing: regarding that idiot you fucked – Yanna. I'm afraid that her husband has been informed of her infidelity with you. He has also been informed that you visited a walk-in medical clinic a few days ago and were diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease—'

'You asshole,' I heard myself say.

'Intemperate remarks like that cannot but upset me. And I do not like to be upset. Yes, Yanna's husband will kill
you
. . . but only if we tell him to. He's like Omar – stupid, bestial. But he also knows his place in the pecking order of things. So, once again, fear not: he won't hurt you, unless ordered to.'

'I don't want trouble,' I heard myself say.

'Then you won't have any . . . unless you make trouble. Good morning, Monsieur Ricks.'

He motioned to Mr Tough Guy, who tapped me on the shoulder and pointed toward the door. I exited through it and down the stairs. Though part of me wanted to hurry across the courtyard, out the door and down to the
commissariat
, I knew I'd just be playing into everybody's hands if I did that. Sezer would find some way of providing definitive evidence that I murdered Omar, and the cops would happily buy it. As far as they were concerned, this case needed a denouement – and my conclusive guilt was it.

Think, think.

But all I could do right now was think about how tired I was, and how bed was the only logical place for me right now.

So I went to my room and drugged myself, as I knew sleep wouldn't arrive without massive chemical help. I didn't set the alarm. The next thing I knew there was a loud banging on my door.

'American! . . . American!' a familiar voice shouted.

It took me several moments to work out where I was, and to squint at my watch. Four thirty. Shit, shit, shit. I was due at Margit's in thirty minutes.

'American! . . . American!'

More banging.

I staggered out of bed, my head still fogged in, and opened the door. Mr Beard was standing outside, looking pissed off.