Paris Noir

GUY GEORGES’ FINAL CRIME by ROMAIN SLOCOMBE

At work, in the design department, in the corridors and the canteen too, it was all the women were talking about. The RTL announcer had been first to broadcast the news, at 7 a.m. on that Thursday 26th March 1998. And the other radio stations soon swung into action.

After long months of investigations, the police have finally named France’s most wanted man, the serial killer of east Paris. His name is Guy Georges. Thousands of copies of his photograph have been circulated to the police; every officer has been issued with one. A manhunt has been launched, his arrest is now only a matter of hours…

Julie Coray, sitting at a table at the back of the Reader’s Digest magazine canteen in Bagneux, a southern suburb of Paris, raises her glass of mineral water and smiles at her colleagues: ‘At last I’ll be able to go home in peace tonight. It’s been horrific, especially on the nights we’re going to press: my road’s really badly lit and when you come out of the Métro around midnight or one in the morning, I can’t tell you how awful it is…’

‘Where d’you live, Julie?’ asked Farida, the new editorial assistant.

‘Between Denfert and Gaîté. Rue Cels, next to Montparnasse cemetery… In the fourteenth.’

Sylvie Mariani, the picture editor, shrugged her shoulders: ‘You weren’t in much danger, anyway: that’s outside the killer’s stamping ground. The guy only operated around Bastille…’

Slightly miffed, Julie cut herself a piece of ham and mushroom pie, muttering: ‘Yeah, but still…’

Farida, in her guttural Maghrebi accent, came to her rescue: ‘Well, I’d like to see you do it, Sylvie… You’re married and you go home early to feed your kids. But for four months women have been scared stiff, I swear, at night it’s terrifying. You let yourself into your building looking over your shoulder in case some guy with a knife’s about to jump you and force you to go up with him… Bastille or anywhere else, it’s the same, I don’t see the difference. Once you’ve been raped and murdered, you’ve been raped and murdered. It’s too late to put up your hand and say “Hey, mister, that’s cheating, this isn’t your patch!’”

Farida had a point and her colleagues all giggled, Sylvie included. They could laugh, now that the nightmare was over, A nightmare for Paris’s female population that had been going on since the end of November, with the discovery – by her own father – of Estelle Magd’s body, raped, her throat slit, in her home. After years of bewildering judicial negligence and bureaucratic incompetence, the police had finally made the link between different cases that had strange similarities. Examining magistrates working on rape and murder cases that bore the hallmark of the same sexual criminal had agreed to share the evidence in their possession. Now DNA test results were being compared in public and private laboratories all over France. Mainstream newspapers and magazines had got hold of the story, at the risk of unleashing a panic: a bloodthirsty wolf, a psychopathic killer – he was North African, Egyptian to be precise, they said (on account of a footprint discovered in a pool of blood, the second toe longer than the big toe) – was terrorising Paris, slitting the throats of lone, pretty young women in car parks or in their homes. A steady stream of suspects were questioned but to no avail, photos on file of thousands of offenders were shown to the only survivor who’d been able to get a good look at the killer, but in vain. Photofits of the olive-skinned man followed, none of them reliable. Gossip and fanciful accusations threatened to jam the switchboard of the Paris murder squad headquarters, women trembled with fear, and gallant men saw their colleagues of the supposedly weaker sex all the way home at night…

And twenty-four-year-old Julie Coray, a striking brunette from Rennes who’d recently arrived in Paris, landing this rather well-paid job as graphic designer for the French edition of Reader’s Digest Select Editions, would shudder every evening as she inserted her key in the lock of her small studio flat, on the top floor of a dilapidated building on rue Cels.

From the neighbouring desk, Robert Flageul – usually in charge of rewriting dramatic first-hand accounts and other ‘human interest stories’ that the review pre-digested each month with the aim of bringing tears to pensioners’ eyes – cut in, addressing the picture editor: ‘Plus you had it all wrong, Sylvie. ‘The beast of Bastille’, ‘the east Paris killer’, it’s all just tabloid cliché, I shouldn’t have to tell you that. The first crime attributed to this Guy Georges was Pascale Escarfail, the humanities student, murdered on the 24th of January ‘91 in her flat in the fourteenth arrondissement, on rue Delambre, just round the corner from Julie, which is a long way from Bastille, and more south than east. And other times he rampaged through the thirteenth, the tenth, the nineteenth… His turf seems pretty vast to me. Not to mention the assaults he must have committed before they’d made the link with him…’

Back in design, Julie Coray saw that her boss, the magazine’s art director, wasn’t yet back from his lunch with an illustrator at the Japanese restaurant next to the motorway, below the RER station. Knowing Gilles – a cigar-smoker and something of a foodie, too – he wouldn’t return before 3 p.m., so she had time to make a call before carrying on with the layout. Julie rang the mobile number of Claire, her best friend, a Breton like her. Claire Le Flohic was in her sixth year of medicine and was doing her internship at Cochin Hospital.

She answered after the fourth ring. ‘Oh, it’s you? Your name didn’t come up… You’re lucky I answered, I was about to reject the call, I’m on duty till tonight.’

‘I’m calling from the land line, at the magazine. Did you hear the news?’

The young intern answered in a voice quivering with excitement: ‘You bet! In fact, I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone but I’d known for two days they were going to get him. My cousin’s working at the Nantes lab that found the killer’s DNA. They’d been on the case for weeks, they compared it manually with 3,500 specimens before they found it. Suddenly there it was, just like that, bingo! They couldn’t believe their eyes! Amazing…!’

Twenty-four years old like Julie, Claire was a true-crime fan and passionate about forensic medicine, which she intended to specialise in. She was already pestering the professor to let her attend autopsies in criminal cases – in theory, off limits to trainees – during which Claire impressed him with her knowledge of heparic temperature, rigor mortis and dermabrasions, as well as marks from blows and wounds. The case of the ‘east Paris killer’ literally fascinated her, and Claire was convinced that she herself resembled one of the psychopath’s victims, found raped and murdered in an underground car park on boulevard Reuilly in January 1994: Catherine Rocher, a pretty, twenty-seven-year-old marketing assistant. ‘A tall girl with long brown hair, well mine’s more chestnut and very long, but we both have a straight nose, a long smiling face and we’re full of life! The killer goes for that kind of girl. If I were a psychological profiler, I’d infer that he’d been very unhappy when he was young, his parents probably knocked him about, he had a difficult childhood, is unemployed, has already done time for rape or assault, he lives in a squat, maybe prostitutes himself and is ashamed of it. He’s angry with the whole world and especially when he sees a beautiful girl go by, looking happy, he can’t help it, he’s compelled to follow her home, tie her up and rape her… And afterwards, he slashes her, aiming for the neck. There was blood all over the fl-’

Julie shuddered in disgust, thinking her friend a bit twisted for revelling in such macabre details. It was as if, from fantasising about this series of sexual murders, she’d begun to imagine herself as one of the victims, and got a kick out of it. ‘You’re right, I’m a real perv,’ Claire laughed.

‘Well anyway,’ Julie interrupted her, ‘it’s finally over… We can breathe…’

Through the bay window, she watched the light play on the buds of the trees on boulevard Louis Pasteur. It was a beautiful spring afternoon. This weekend, she’d go for a walk in the Bois de Boulogne, or the Luxembourg Gardens, or treat herself to a movie with Claire…

‘Don’t you believe it, darling!’ The medical student’s tone turned menacing. ‘Nothing’s over till he’s arrested! Right now the cops only have his name and his photo… And even if they catch him and he gets life without remission, he’ll be out after twenty years, you’ll see, if he doesn’t escape earlier! And then, when he’s out, he’ll start again. I’ve really studied his case: this ‘Guy Georges’, since now we know his name, is incurable. He’s not a madman, more an intelligent thug. He looks normal, maybe even likeable, it’s just he can’t resist, it’s in his past or his genes, he has to kill. Once a month if possible. He’s dodged the police so often he thinks he’s invincible. And at those moments, the wretched girl in front of him, tied up, weak and terrified, is just an object, not a human being. An object of rape and then murder.’

‘Claire, please stop…’

The intern chuckled. ‘OK, I’m stopping, you poor thing. But nothing’s over, you’ll see. He knows he’s a marked man, he could get even more dangerous, take a girl hostage, I don’t know… So you still have to be extra careful going home tonight, OK?’

Julie rolled her eyes and pulled a face.

‘All right, all right. And if I’m too scared when I come out of the station, I’ll call you to come and escort me to rue Cels, OK?’

The two friends burst out laughing, blew each other kisses down the phone and ended the call at the same time.

The afternoon went by like a dream. Concentrating on the Mac screen, on her photos, titles and fonts, and files to be sent to the printer, Julie wasn’t aware of time passing. It was the end of March, the days were growing longer, but eventually the light faded… At 7 p.m., Gilles stood up, put on his raincoat and waved goodbye to his assistant. ‘Right, see you tomorrow, Julie. I’ll leave you to finish off the cover. Send it to Magnus, wait for his approval, then you can go home.’

‘But…’

‘Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. See you then, bye!’

Magnus Laksson, a Finn who’d settled in the US, supervised the art direction for all the international editions. His trenchant opinions, utter lack of diplomacy, and ultra-conservative view of what Reader’s Digest should be in America and elsewhere, made him the bête noire of art directors working under him. Julie sent him the mockup of the cover accompanied by a few polite phrases in her approximate English and waited for the verdict, which, with the time difference (Laksson had no doubt gone for lunch), only arrived on her screen at 10.30 p.m., French time.

The Finn hated the cover.

The response, in two laconic, brutal sentences, reminded Gilles and Julie that the cover should never allude visually to the issue’s central theme but must be kept to some neutral and soothing image – and demanded a new one before the end of the day.

Julie didn’t dare disturb Gilles at home so, valiant Breton that she was, she laboured over a new version of the cover which took until twenty-five past midnight, sent it to the US and shut down her computer. If she stayed to wait for the American reaction, she’d miss the last train home from Bagneux. And she didn’t have enough money on her for a taxi to Montparnasse at the night rate, which was at least sixty francs. Julie ran down the empty corridors, her coat under her arm, to the foyer where the North African night watchman, deep in a sports paper, nodded at her vaguely. She raced down the front steps and set off across a deserted Bagneux, in the glow of the streetlights, into an icy wind she hadn’t expected. Anticipating going home much earlier, Julie had even put on a miniskirt today, something she hadn’t dared do in four months, terrified by the possibility of a nocturnal encounter with the Ripper. But the morning news had reassured her on that score…

Her heels clicked on the tarmac, she ran through the labyrinth of narrow streets, lined with peaceful small pensioners’ houses, as far as the main road which she crossed, defying the red pedestrian signal, between two cars hurtling at well over 50 miles an hour which honked warnings at her. The train indicator board in the empty station showed the Paris train was at the platform.

‘Oh no,’ Julie groaned, inserting her season ticket into the machine.

The ‘doors closing’ signal sounded as she reached the platform. She ran as if her life depended on it, leapt between the sliding doors, forcing her way through, and she was inside, panicky and breathless, frantically tugging at the handle of her bag which was wedged between the strips of rubber, as the train pulled away.

The few passengers in the compartment stared at her briefly before falling back into the apathy of exhausted workers or depressed night owls. She flopped onto a seat, her heart thudding, and watched vaguely as the suburban lights and bare station platforms slipped past. Ravenous (she hadn’t eaten since midday), sleepy, her head nodding, she nearly dozed off and missed her stop. Denfert-Rochereau. She jumped up and just made it through the hissing doors.

Because she’d got on at the end of the train, Julie, walking along the platform towards the exit, came first to the narrow staircase that led directly to the square, in the former railway station converted to a regional express station. Which would mean having to cross the vast Denfert-Rochereau traffic intersection in the wind and cold… Julie opted for the next exit, which connected to the Métro, lines 4 and 6, and would bring her out of the station as close to her home as possible, with only rue Froiaevaux to walk up to rue Cels.

In the bowels of the empty station, she used her ticket again to exit the row of ticket barriers and turned, following signs to the Porte d’Orléans line. It was a complicated network of corridors but the young provincial woman was becoming familiar with it. At the next intersection she had to turn left, then sharp right towards the escalator. It was in this last corridor that she saw him.

Julie considered herself good at remembering faces, and she’d studied the photofit of the ‘east Paris killer’ in the media many times. The only difference was that the man had grown a thin moustache. Everything else matched the description given by the survivor. In his thirties, tall, athletic-looking, lithe, the dark skin of a North African. Closely cropped hair, practically shaved. Their eyes met just as he drew level with her. For that fraction of a second, Julie detected the glimmer of interest in the man’s eyes, saw the quick, sidelong glance at her slender legs below her miniskirt. She hurried on, short of breath, looking down, her expression as neutral as possible. Her heart was pounding wildly. What an appalling coincidence, what terrifying bad luck… Just as long as he didn’t turn round now and follow her! Julie didn’t dare look over her shoulder. She let her shaky body be carried by the escalator, praying she’d find an RATP employee still at the ticket window. It was almost one in the morning. The last trains had probably all left. She pushed the heavy glass door and saw with annoyance that the ticket office was closed, the blind was down, the lights out. Now she only had to walk up the last flight of steps to the square, where the wind was gusting hard and clouds scudded across the sky, revealing glimpses of a perfectly round, wan moon. It illuminated the powerful musculature of the Denfert Lion, which watched over the middle of the square in bronze impassivity.

On the other side of avenue General Leclerc, one of the severe twin buildings of the former ‘Barrière d’Enfer’ tollgate housed the entrance to the sinister Catacombs – the place where, in 1785, the Prefect Lenoir dumped millions of skeletons, hauling them from the charnel house of the Innocents in macabre cartloads and filling the air of Les Halles with a foul stench. Julie turned left, walked past the gate to the little park and reached the corner of rue Froiaevaux, just before the taxi rank where one solitary vehicle was waiting. After crossing the road, attempting to look natural, she half turned round.

The olive-skinned man was there, standing at the top of the station steps, lighting a cigarette and looking to left and right. He saw the trembling young woman’s silhouette and, putting away his lighter, strode deliberately in the direction Julie had taken.

She nearly fainted. He’d spotted her. Singled her out as his next victim. At this stage of the game, he had nothing left to lose. Wanted by every police force, accused of six or seven rapes and murders; what difference would one more or less make to the sentence he’d get? Guy Georges wanted to experience the pleasure of a terrified, pretty young woman one last time, thrust his penis into her and then his blade, before ending his life behind bars. The full moon was beckoning, arousing his powerful killer instincts… Julie, after hesitating and deciding not to get into the taxi, feverishly repeated to herself Claire’s words of advice, as she scurried beneath the trees which were bending in the wind: ‘If you notice you’re being followed, never go straight home. Go and sit in a public place, a café, wait for the guy to realise he’s been seen and give up.’ In front of her, rue Froiaevaux, the quickest way to rue Cels, stretched out along the cemetery walls. Ill-lit, gloomy, completely deserted. A real death-trap, an invitation to murder…

Julie was beginning to understand what the prostitutes of Whitechapel must have felt, wandering anxiously in the fog, straining to her the footsteps of Jack the Ripper. Changing her route, she turned left into rue Boulard, then walked up rue Daguerre. The shops were all closed, but still, she’d be nearer her building, where she was hoping to see, two streets before hers. La Bélière, a night bistro, usually open at this late hour.

A quick sideways glance told her that the man in denim, whose cigarette made a red dot in the shadows, had also turned into rue Daguerre.

Further up the narrow street, she saw, far away like a safe haven, a reassuring port in the storm, La Bélière, its lights blazing. Walking faster, Julie pulled her mobile from her bag, pressed ‘contacts’ and then ‘call’ as soon as Claire’s name appeared. Her friend absolutely had to come to meet her in the café. Cochin Hospital, like Claire’s flat, very close to her work, was only fifteen minutes away on foot. The killer, who only attacked lone women, would give up and go away if he saw them together.

‘Hi, this is Claire Le Flohic’s phone. I can’t speak to you right now, but leave me a short message and I…’

Putting the phone away, Julie pushed open the door of the smoky bistro. There were hardly any customers.

‘We’re about to close, miss,’ warned the owner, who was drying glasses behind his bar.

Julie clasped her hands: ‘Please, just a coffee,’ she begged. ‘I’m meeting a friend, she won’t be long.’

She sat down at a table towards the back, near a window. Took out her mobile again and toyed with it. Her coffee was brought, along with the till receipt. She paid immediately. Just as the waitress left her table, Julie saw the olive-skinned man enter, sit on a bar stool near the door and order a drink. Julie looked down at the steaming coffee, the bill, her hand quivering over her mobile. Then she pressed ‘call’ again.

The voicemail message again. She listened to the end this time and when it was her turn to speak, after the beep, whispered into the phone: ‘Claire, it’s Julie. Listen… Call me back as soon as you get this, it’s urgent. You have to come and meet me, I’m in La Bélière on rue Daguerre. I don’t dare go home, I don’t know what to do. Claire, I’m scared…’

She ended the call, making sure to keep the mobile on. Minutes went by. Julie gulped her coffee. It was still scalding, and very strong. At the bar, Guy Georges was chatting with the owner, a glass of beer in his hand. ‘What a moron that man is,’ Julie said to herself. ‘Can’t he see the guy looks exactly like the photofit? He could at least make a discreet call to the police… But hey, he’s a man, what does he care, he can’t understand the terror Parisian women have been living with for four months…’

Claire’s voice came back to her, telling the story – which she seemed to delight in – of the attack endured by Elisabeth O, the only victim kept prisoner by the killer to have come out alive…

The girl was going home late, after spending the evening with friends… She arrives at the entrance to her building, punches in the door code… crosses a courtyard, goes through a second door and up the stairs… On the first floor, where her flat is, she hears the entrance door to the building slam shut. Then, hurried steps on the staircase, and a shadow jumps on her… The attacker puts a knife to her throat and she hears a hoarse voice say: ‘Don’t shout, don’t move. Open your door.’ Terrified, Elisabeth obeys. The door closes behind them, the guy immediately tries to reassure her: ‘If you behave yourself, you won’t get hurt. I’m on the run. I just need to sleep here for a few hours. I’ll be off in the morning.’ The flat was a duplex, with the bedroom on the lower level. They go down together… He’ll have to tie up his prisoner, Guy Georges apologises, so he can sleep… He lets her smoke a last cigarette, then starts to bind her wrists, chatting all the while. Despite his North African appearance, he has no accent. She asks his name. He answers: ‘Eric’. ‘You don’t look like an Eric,’ she observes. Irritated, he growls: ‘Just call me Flo.’ Then he takes off his shoes, settles down as if he really does want to sleep. It’s completely dark in the bedroom, but a light’s still on in the hall… The killer gets irritated again, and goes to switch it off. In the meantime, Elisabeth, who’s surreptitiously managed to free her hands, opens the window and jumps into the yard, running off down the street…

Julie, who was spinning out her coffee while she recalled Claire’s story, looked up. Surprise: the man was no longer at the bar, the owner was alone, wiping it down. The man had left. Julie couldn’t believe it. The killer had lost heart, seeing her talking on her mobile and clearly waiting for someone. Yes, of course… And anyway, she now acknowledged, maybe it wasn’t Guy Georges after all… Her imagination was playing tricks on her… A photofit isn’t necessarily faithful… If it was really true to life, the cops would have caught him ages ago…

The other customers were getting up to go.

‘This time, we’re closing, young lady!’ the owner called as he locked his till.

Julie was back outside in the icy wind, nervously inspecting both sides of the road. The customers were laughing as they walked away, the bistro’s metal shutter crashed down with a painful grating sound. She pulled on her gloves, shivering. Steam formed in front of her mouth. Giving up on Claire, Julie turned right, walking back up the road towards her building. She passed the picture framer’s, the accordion shop, and turned right at the corner of the bakery Le Moulin de la Vierge. Julie was now in rue Fermat, practically on her doorstep.

Crossing the road in front of the traffic wardens’ station, all closed up of course, she realised she was completely alone. No sounds of voices or steps. The area was desolate. She need only stop at 5 rue Cels, press in her door code, push open the door, slip under the porch and cross the courtyard to the staircase. Which she did as quickly as possible. She only had two floors to go when she heard the outer door slam shut. She should have heard it a little earlier. Then rapid steps on the staircase.

Her heart beating so hard she thought it was going to burst, Julie ran up to the fourth floor, the last, charging into the narrow corridor of the attic rooms. The fluid, quick steps were coming up the stairs, closer and closer. She grabbed the keys from her bag, trembling, had trouble inserting the right key in the lock. The second the door was finally open, a shape rushed at her and shoved her roughly inside. Julie stumbled, with a squeal. The door slammed.

‘Don’t shout. Don’t move.’

Some groping around, then the man found the switch. Light shone from the ceiling, revealing the North African man in his jean jacket. Julie opened her mouth, tried to scream (The ones who got away, Claire repeated, were the ones who screamed their heads off. The man ran for it…), but couldn’t. No sound came out.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ Guy Georges declared. ‘I don’t mean you any harm. I just need a roof for the night, that’s all. I’ll be off early in the morning.’

She nodded, her eyes filled with tears.

‘You see, when I saw you in the Métro, I fell for you straight away. I need help, you’re beautiful, you look kind. I’m homeless, my landlord threw me out because I’m three months behind with the rent…’

Julie went on nodding her head, sniffing.

‘Don’t cry. Take off your coat.’

She obeyed, still trembling. Threw the coat over the corner of the sofa that she and Claire had gone to buy last week, at Ikea.

He sat on a chair, lit a cigarette.

Julie stammered: ‘What… What’s your name?’

‘Florent. My mother’s French, my father’s Algerian.’

Her heart sank. Florent… Flo. Doubt was no longer possible. The name he’d given Elisabeth before she escaped. She was in the presence of Guy Georges. The prisoner of Guy Georges. The Beast of Bastille…

Now she knew what was in store. Claire had told her enough times:

He ties the girl up, trying to reassure her. Then he takes out a knife and rips her clothes. His usual method is to slice the bra between the cups. That’s his serial killer ‘signature’. Then he slashes her knickers, on the side. He tells the girl to suck him, then he rapes her. Finally, he starts stabbing, violently, going for the neck…

Since she couldn’t scream, Julie attempted to soften him up.

Seem friendly. Human. That way, maybe…

The ones who were nice to him, who did whatever he said – like Catherine Rocher who gave him her credit card, with the pin number – it was no use. They’re all dead.

‘Would… Would you like a coffee?’

Guy Georges smiled. ‘Good idea.’

Shaking, Julie went to the kitchen area. She took out an aluminium saucepan, turned on the tap, poured in cold water. Lit the gas (she broke four matches before managing to light one). Then, standing on tiptoe, she took the packet of coffee from the cupboard.

‘Do you want a hand?’

‘N-no thank you.’

My forensic medicine professor performed the autopsies on three of the victims. He told me that to reach the vertebrae, having gone through the throat, required tremendous strength…

Or a tremendous hatred of women. Of women, or the whole world…

Julie struggled to open the filter and put it in the plastic cone over the coffee pot. Poured ground coffee into the filter. Poured in double the amount before she realised.

‘What do you do?’ asked Guy Georges, behind her.

‘G-graphic designer for a magazine… You?’

‘I was working in a Japanese restaurant, washing up… But I got sick of it, I didn’t go back and they fired me. Can I help with the cups?’

She moved aside.

‘No, stay there… Please.’

In Julie’s handbag, the phone began to ring. Beating her to it, Guy Georges fell on the bag, opened it, found the mobile, pressed the red button. The ring tone broke off. He put the phone in the top pocket of his jean jacket.

‘You can call your friends back tomorrow,’ he smiled. ‘After I’ve gone…’

The water was boiling in the pan. Julie turned off the gas, poured the water onto the coffee. She took two cups and two saucers from the kitchen cabinet and two spoons from the drawer. She turned back to the centre of the tiny studio flat and, making the spoon quiver, put a cup and a saucer on the coffee table, in front of the sofa.

What would he use to tie her up?

Usually, he finds shoelaces in the flat. And he brings his own gaffer tape…

The coffee had almost finished filtering. Julie threw the filter into the sink and picked up the pot of black, boiling liquid.

Which pocket was he hiding the gaffer tape in? And the knife? And when would he say ‘I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to tie you up and gag you for the night’?

After the coffee?

Guy Georges, still with his reassuring smile (but his eyes were cold), raised his cup towards her, holding the edge of the saucer. Julie flung the contents of the coffee pot straight into his face.

He let out a howl. Leapt up from the chair, which toppled over behind him. He lurched forward, his face dripping with black streaks and his skin visibly reddening. He walked forward, hands out in front of him. His big killer’s hands…

Julie turned back to the cooker, grabbed the enormous iron frying pan given her by Grandma Coray, who lived on the Brittany coast.

And brought it down, with all the strength she possessed, on the Bastille killer’s shaved head. Again and again. A red mist passed before her eyes. The man had fallen to his knees, and uttered a groan between every thud of metal to his skull.

By the time Julie Coray had recovered her wits, Guy Georges was no longer moving. A large pool of blood was seeping across the carpet, mixed with the spatterings of coffee.

Julie went to vomit in the sink. Nor having eaten, all she brought up was a little bitter bile. Wiping her mouth and face with a cloth, she went back to the lifeless body.

A wallet was sticking out of the front pocket of the killer’s jeans.

Overcoming her revulsion, Julie tried to find a pulse on the man’s right wrist. Nothing. She placed her fingers on the carotid artery. Nothing there either. Finally, she decided to pull out the wallet, and opened it.

She found an identity card in the name of Florent Chétoui, born 22 September 1967 in Blida (Algeria). And a pay slip from the restaurant Delices d’Osaka, rue de la Croix-Nivert, Paris 15, with a short letter of dismissal.

Julie’s mobile began to ring again. In the front pocket of Florent Chétoui’s jacket. Fighting waves of nausea, the young woman turned the inert body over and retrieved the phone. Big blisters were swelling the face, turning it a purplish red.

‘Julie? You OK?’

Claire.

‘Yes, well… I’m OK. I think…’

‘It didn’t sound like it. Your message, on my voicemail…’

‘Yes, I’m OK… Better.’

‘Did you see, they got him, huh?’

‘What? Got who?’

‘Guy Georges of course! Didn’t you listen to the news? Two cops recognised him and caught him, softly softly, early in the afternoon. He was coming out of Blanche Métro station, went into a Monoprix… They cornered him by the perfume counter,’ she chuckled.

‘…’

‘Apparently he didn’t struggle or anything…’

Stepping over the body, Julie rushed to the TV, pressed the button. She caught the start of the late-night news on TFI. First the presenter’s voice, then his smiling face:

… freely confessed to the murders of Pascale E, in 1991, and Magali S, in 1997. Police are continuing to question him. According to the police, Guy Georges is not North African but mixed race, Afro-European, and only vaguely resembled the two photofits…

Julie had another urge to vomit. She turned down the volume and picked up the mobile again.

What were they talking about, when she had a man’s body in her attic studio in the fourteenth arrondissement? A man she’d just killed, thinking she was acting in self-defence…

Was that Guy Georges’ fault, or Julie Coray’s?

It was all unbelievably unfair.

She had to think hard before calling the police.

Tomorrow, it was Julie Coray who’d be front page news. Unless…

Maybe Claire had the answer.

Dear Claire.

Breton women are strong. They help each other out. If Claire was coming from Cochin, she could borrow a dissection saw from there… Julie eyed the roll of 30-litre bin liners in the open kitchen cabinet, under the sink.

‘Claire…’

‘Yes…’

‘I’ve got a big favour to ask you… If you could come now…’

A sigh.

‘Oh, you poor thing… I called you because I turned my phone on again and got your message. I couldn’t sleep, they’ve stuffed me with painkillers… I’m in Cochin, with a long-leg cylinder cast…’

‘A what?’

‘A long-leg cylinder cast. The kind that goes all the way up your leg from the foot to the top of the thigh. I got hit by a taxi crossing the road outside the hospital, just after we spoke, at midday today… D’you realise, I’m in hospital in my own department. It’s a pain… In plaster for two months! I’m sorry, but I think you’ll have to cope on your own like a big girl…’

Letting the phone fall to her side, Julie Coray straightened up, dazed, and stared at the corpse for a long time. The broken skull, the dented frying pan, the overturned cup and saucer, the coffee pot she’d thrown, smashed to smithereens, the puddle of red, glistening blood with black swirls, reflecting the light bulb on the ceiling. Then her eyes turned back to the TV where the TFI newscaster opened his arms before passing to the next topic. Julie turned up the sound.

… that’s all we can say for the moment on what’s been today’s main news story. Guy Georges will never commit another crime. The spectre no longer haunts Paris, women are safe again and can look forward to the future with a smile!

Putting the mobile back to her ear, Julie wished her friend goodnight and a speedy recovery, promised to visit her in hospital very soon, ended the call, left the TV on for background noise – and pulled from the cupboard a plastic sheet, a broom, a bucket and a floor cloth.

On rue Cels, like everywhere else in the capital, the bin men came every day. Tomorrow morning, Julie would phone Reader’s Digest to tell them she had a cold.

Then she’d go to a DIY store to buy a metal saw.

Translation © Lulu Norman and Ros Schwartz