Paris Noir

DAY I

Twenty thousand now,’ says the fat, greasy-haired man in a cheap brown suit, his forehead and upper lip covered in perspiration. He repeats: ‘Twenty thousand now,’ as if to convince himself of the amount, and taps his desk drawer. ‘Cash. And twenty thousand when the job’s done, if it all goes well, no discussion. Again, cash.’ Breaks out into a fresh sweat. I’m handing over forty thousand euros to a guy whose name I don’t even know. He mops his forehead with the cuff of his brown suit jacket, which is nice and absorbent, as if he does it all the time. It’s come to this… This or fleeing abroad. This and fleeing abroad?

The guy standing in front of him – athletic body, well-groomed, shaved head, smooth, tanned, tight black T-shirt, black jeans, black leather boots, not far off forty, from the slight slackening of the skin and the stomach – wordlessly extends an open hand across the desk. The fat man hesitates for a moment, opens the drawer and tosses an envelope onto the desk. The other guy picks it up, counts the notes in no hurry, and slips them into his underpants, under his jeans, pulling in his stomach.

‘How long?’

‘A week, max.’

‘Fine.’

He automatically hitches up his jeans and leaves. Does his sums as he goes down the stairs (avoid lifts, potential hazard). Forty thousand, not exactly a fortune. But I’m not getting any younger… Besides, it’s not the riskiest job. That’s why it’s worth it, don’t want to stick my neck out, or share. Not bad. He’s back in the street. Little wink at the copper plate by the entrance to the building. Alfred Poupon Property Agent, Staircase A, 3rd floor, left. Old Poupon was sweating, he reeked of fear. Not used to this type of operation. Is that a good thing for me or dangerous?

Hidden behind a third-floor window, Alfred Poupon watches the man walk off down the street with the wad of notes in his underpants. He turns the corner, calm and assured. That’s it, he’s gone.

End of a suffocatingly muggy August day. Zé leaves Paris at the wheel of his white, five-year-old, all-purpose Clio. He turns off the périphérique onto a very wide main road alongside a chaotic sprawl of showy office blocks. This new business district is the big city’s latest growth spurt. At this hour, and in the middle of August, it’s completely deserted, quite sinister. Zé cruises slowly. He’s approaching the A86 motorway which is becoming the second Paris orbital, spots the slip road, turns onto it, goes even slower. The target’s there, set back from the road below him, a few metres from the security barrier. Zé’s on the alert, eyes sharp, neurons buzzing: take it all in at a glance, clock everything, don’t risk a second drive-by. An isolated five-storey building of dirty, greyish brick, with a long crack running diagonally from window to window. All the openings, which must have been bricked up once, are now gaping. Behind the building, a huge overgrown waste ground dotted with loose stones, apparently empty, sloping down to a canal where there’s little activity.

But the building in the middle of this wilderness is teeming with life. At ground level, on the strip of beaten earth between the façade and the motorway slip road, there’s a whole crowd of black men in jellabas or brightly coloured shirts coming and going amid the dust – squatting, sitting on wooden packing cases, standing around, chatting, playing cards and doing business. An old man in a long, immaculately white robe sitting motionless on a chair against the wall, face upturned, eyes closed, seems to be drinking in the light of the orange sunset which makes his face glow.

Through the cracks in the wall, glimpses of a central wooden staircase, women in flowing boubous busy around makeshift fires surrounded by hordes of children jostling and running. The upper floors look very animated too. Zé thinks he catches a whiff of the familiar smell of groundnuts and spices simmering. That’s the real thrill of the chase, when the hunter feels this close to his prey. Get a grip. Professional. Loads of squatters, all looking alike. No hope of passing unnoticed with your white mug, even with a deep tan. He pulls out onto the motorway and accelerates.

DAY 2

In a midnight-blue tracksuit, Zé jogs along the former towpath beside the canal. A few warehouses, silos and barges line the quay. Not a soul. He draws level with the Africans’ squat. A fence, broken in several places. Still nobody about. He pulls his tracksuit hood over his shaved head and slips through to the waste ground. A series of stony humps and dips overgrown with brambles, like a field of ruins dominated by the grey brick building, obscured at the bottom by brambles. From this side, everything looks dead. The ground- and first-floor windows are still bricked up with concrete breeze blocks and on the upper floors only a few small holes have been made here and there. Clearly the squatters are wary of the waste ground and are trying to keep it out.

Zé moves slowly and noiselessly, camouflaged by the undergrowth, and comes across a whole network of paths and hidey-holes dug into the ground, protected by cardboard, planks, and sometimes carpeting. You can bet that after dark, this sort of wild garden, so close to the dormitory suburbs, will be teeming with people. Ze looks for a hole that appears to be empty and finds one on an area of high ground near the motorway from which he can watch the building. He clears some space for himself with a few flat stones, wedges himself in and waits. The building looks deserted. In the late afternoon, Zé distinctly hears the noise of people flocking back to the squat and going about their usual business. In the openings of the facade he’s watching, he sees lights flickering. Then darkness falls and the waste ground comes alive. Life rises up from the canal, floats above the ground, as if immaterial. Rustling, whispering, half-glimpsed flames. Zé hopes he’s not in the path of the main tide of people and focuses on the facade. Sniff out any clandestine contacts between the squat and the waste ground. That’s his way in. He lights a joint, to blend in, and pulls his hood down over his eyes.

As the night’s very dark, for a few hours he concentrates on the sounds so as to chart the comings and goings, and thinks he’s identified more intense activity under the brambles at the farthest corner of the building. He doesn’t budge. He waits. Around 4 a.m., life begins to flow back towards the canal and dissolves into the night by osmosis.

Zé uncurls himself, dives under the brambles closest to the building and finds a clear path running its entire length. At ground level, the five bricked-up basement windows must open into the cellars. Zé stops in front of the fifth one, bricked up like the others, and prods the breeze blocks. Finding they’re loose, he pulls a knife from his pocket and inserts the blade between the rubble stones. They’re a snug fit, but not cemented in. Zé moves away quickly, and hides in a dip in the ground, keeping still again. Take time to think. I’ve found the front door. No doubt I’m sharing it with dealers I know nothing about. So I don’t know what I might find behind it. Don’t want to know. Too great a risk of being seen. Come back tomorrow, properly equipped, and give it a go, blind.

Around 5.30, the lights begin to come on again in the squat. Between the dealers leaving and the squatters waking, I have got a good half hour to act undisturbed. That’s plenty. Zé too makes his way back to the canal.

DAY 3

Back to the waste ground, same time, same clothes, to find the same hole and wait there. The routine, in other words. Zé’s brought an old rucksack, crammed full, and a sleeping bag. The hours tick by. Nothing out of the ordinary. Only, around midnight, a kid who’s already well out of it and really wants to hang out with ‘a grown-up’ and ‘possibly more’. Zé frightens him off with a few curses in Serbo-Croat and the kid doesn’t insist.

4.20 a.m. Zé gets up, walks quickly over to the fifth basement window. Crouching in front of it, from his rucksack he pulls a pair of rubber gloves, a balaclava and night-vision goggles, which he puts on. He inserts a flat hook between the breeze blocks and loosens them just like that, throws his rucksack through the window and drops down into the cellar. First surprise, he hits the ground sooner than expected. A huge underfloor space rather than a cellar. Barely room to stand up. Senses a presence in a corner: a horizontal shape beginning to sit up. In two strides, Zé’s on top of him, pinning him to the floor. He knocks him out with a punch to the chin. He finishes him off with a stone picked up from the ground. Quick, find the the trap door leading up to the ground floor.

Torch. Some kind of flimsy wooden partition gives way to his touch. Piles of rubbish. Towards the centre of the building, a few wooden cases full of wire jewellery, wooden statuettes and leather belts, street hawkers’ wares no doubt, wonderfully flammable material. And the trap door. A gentle push: it yields easily; glance around, I’m just under the main staircase.

The wooden staircase. Perfect. Zé lets the trap door close, hurriedly goes over to the body, drags it under the trap door, piles up the planks from the partition, the boxes full of stuff, the guy’s sleeping bag, syringe, needle, tourniquet, spoon, cotton wool, bottle of water and even a dose of smack: do the job properly. Sprinkles several litres of methylated spirits over the whole lot. Then takes a spirit stove out of his rucksack, lights it, throws it onto the sleeping bag and opens the trap door. The fire catches immediately. Zé picks up his rucksack, runs to the window, clambers up into the open air with no difficulty. He walks quickly down to the canal without looking back. He must get as far away as he can before the fire spreads to the upper floors. As he walks, he stuffs the balaclava, gloves and goggles into his rucksack, reaches the towpath and breaks into a run, like an early-morning jogger. He watches the building out of the corner of his eye. Judging by the façade, nothing’s happening. The fire hasn’t caught, did it burn itself out in the cellar? Not enough meths? He carries on jogging, keeping up the same pace. Just as the outline of the building vanishes behind the carcass of an abandoned cement silo, he hears a rising scream. Don’t turn around. Hot flush. That’s it, you did it. They chucked you out of their place, you chuck them out of yours. Nice work.

He keeps on running. A kilometre further on, the rucksack will sink to the bottom of the canal, in two kilometres, he’ll be back in his Clio and will drive straight down to Marseille. Tomorrow, he’ll be out of the country. The fire engulfs the cellar, a magnificent blaze sucked towards the stairwell, which grows scorchingly hot before the staircase bursts into flames in several places, crackling. The dangling naked electric wires catch fire and give off a smell of burning rubber which masks that of the corpse being slowly burned to cinders. Wreaths of grey and black smoke billow from the ground floor, spread over the motorway, rise to the roof. Men abruptly roused emerge to see what’s going on just as the first flight of stairs collapses in a shower of sparks. Screams. In a few seconds, the alarm’s raised and the whole building resounds with panic-filled shouts, jostling, stampeding. The fire spreads to the upper storeys – there’s little to hinder it, the doors have been ripped off and the curtains replacing them catch fire at the slightest gust. The women and children gather by the windows at either end of the building, the men try to halt the progress of the flames by blocking any opening with everything they can get their hands on; it’s a ludicrous battle which only feeds the flames. Gas stoves explode here and there. Women jump out of first-floor windows clutching their children. Others on the fourth and fifth floors fling bundles of clothes out of the windows, hover over the void, scream for help. The distraught squatters scatter onto the motorway slip road where traffic is at a standstill.

The fire brigade arrives, sirens wailing, three fire engines, just as the roof over the staircase collapses. They extend their ladders, evacuate the inhabitants, attack the flames. Four more engines arrive. Then the police show up. Two police stations have been mobilised, plus a brigade of riot police. The area is cordoned off. Nobody’s allowed near. Not onlookers, friends or family. Orders are clear: avoid any demonstration of support for the victims, no breaches of the peace. All the uninjured squatters are herded into big buses: immediate removal to a municipal sports centre placed at the disposal of the disaster victims. The dead are taken to the morgues in ambulances and the burned and the wounded to various hospitals, as and when the fire-fighters are able to drag them out of the blaze. Some people manage to slip through the police cordon and run off across the waste ground.

By 6 a.m., in the building where the fire’s still smouldering, only a few bodies are left, along with the fire-fighters still battling the flames and drowning what’s left of the squat under gallons of water. According to the police bulletin, 123 people were living in this squat, seven are dead and fifteen others injured, three of whom are critical; 101 people are in the municipal sports centre where identity checks are being carried out. The plan is to escort any illegal immigrants to the border and rehouse those whose papers are in order. The investigation should establish whether the fire is of criminal or accidental origin.

TWO YEARS LATER

A twelve-storey steel and glass structure hugs the curve of the A86 motorway slip road, which has been concreted over and where at this very moment a garden is being laid out. The façade overlooking the canal has reflective glass echoing the changing hues of the weather, blue sky, clouds, storms, in an arresting mirror effect. A vast paved esplanade stretches down to the canal. In the centre is a circular, white stone fountain with geometric sculptures. On either side, a row of lime trees in front of two multilevel apartment blocks. Terraced gardens that will soon be verdant slope down to the canal. An old-fashioned bandstand has been installed on the quayside, which has been turned into a promenade.

It’s summer, the weather’s very hot, the whole complex is still empty, a few finishing touches yet to be added. The Bâtimo construction company is holding a party to celebrate the completion of the works before the August holidays. White marquees have been set up along the canal and a throng of men in dark suits and a few women in light dresses are crowded around the buffers piled with refreshments and champagne. Entrepreneurs and politicians big and small, of all persuasions, mingle and rub shoulders.

When the mayor arrived, flanked by his deputy, he was a little tense. The tragedy that took place here two years ago is on everyone’s mind, he was thinking. Granted, the police investigation concluded it was an accident following a fight between dealers who had broken into the basement of the squat. But eight dead… Granted, the city council rehoused all the legal immigrants. But not locally, not together, a long way from Paris… and the illegal immigrants were deported before they’d had time to recover. Granted, some immigrant support organisations were invited to this inauguration of the new canal district. But only those with close ties to the mayor’s office. What if the others, the ones the police repressed with some brutality during the fire and afterwards, were to decide to come and spoil the party… Then he relaxes a little more with each glass of champagne. And whisky. After all, the fire, the dead, you’re probably the only one still thinking about it. Too sensitive…

Marchal, the CEO of Bâtimo, has invited Louvois, the big boss of the construction group that bears his name and which owns Bâtimo. The big boss hasn’t come, but he’s sent his son. And Marchal is blowing his own trumpet.

‘With this scheme completed, we’ll be pitching to the mayor and the regional authorities for the renovation of the entire canal area. We’re the experts in mixed business and residential developments. This is the way forward.’

The mayor, who’s perked up, glass in hand, explains to the Paris and regional authorities: ‘We need to change the image of social housing. There’s a high demand for quality social housing here. Among out council employees alone…’

Louvois junior gazes after a tubby man in a navy blue suit, panting and sweating profusely, who’s drinking too much, steering between groups, always on his own. A man who looks completely out of place. He leans towards Marchal. ‘Who’s that guy? Do you know him?’

‘Yes. Alfred Poupon, a property agent. He’s got an extraordinary nose for sniffing out new sites. He’s the one who discovered this one, under the most difficult circumstances.’ A pause. ‘The old buildings were occupied, and the mayor wouldn’t hear of expulsions, of course.’ A fresh silence, no questions. ‘He made a lot of money from the deal, but he’s a sad case. Everything he makes, he loses on the horses.’

Translation © Lulu Norman and Ros Schwartz