Star of Africa

Chapter 2

The first thing Ben had noticed on his return was how rundown the whole neighbourhood looked. Shop fronts that had been scrubbed and spotless last time he’d seen them were now covered in graffiti. A striking number of windows were boarded up where they’d been broken and never repaired, as if the local business community had fallen into some kind of collective apathy. The secondhand bookstore he’d often spent hours browsing in, just up the street from the apartment, was closed down. So was the great little patisserie where he’d always bought his morning croissants. Once bustling with life, the streets seemed weirdly empty. The few people Ben did pass looked furtive and anxious.

The area had never been the most prime location in Paris, by any stretch of the imagination — it wasn’t Avenue Montaigne or the Champs Élysées. But something was different. Not just visibly, but tangibly. Like something in the air, a chill or a shadow, the dropping of a barometer needle signalling a change in pressure and things set to turn stormy. He could sense it like a bad smell. It was the oddest thing, but he put it out of his mind as he made his way from the underground car parking space and up the steps to the familiar old apartment entrance.

Ben had been away from the safehouse long enough to find everything inside covered in a fine layer of dust. Still, it felt like part of him, like a comfortable old shoe, and he hated thinking he’d soon have to part with it. He fired up the heating to get some warmth into the place. Rooting in the kitchen cupboard he found an unopened pack of ground espresso not too far past its sell-by date, brewed up a mug of coffee, strong and black, the way he liked it, and then said to himself, ‘Right. Let’s get to work.’

He’d spent the rest of that first day cleaning up and surveying each room in turn with a critical eye, trying to see it from the perspective of a potential buyer, and making mental lists of what needed doing to bring the place up to scratch. It was fairly spartan and he’d never done much to try to furnish it beyond the absolute basics, but it wasn’t in terrible shape. The most obvious first step was a general freshening-up of the decor, so the morning after his arrival, Ben had gone out to pick up the necessary supplies.

After paying a visit to the local hardware store for some decorating sundries, he’d headed for Abdel’s grocery shop just around the corner from the safehouse to buy in some food provisions for the few days he expected to be around. Ben had known Abdel for years, and liked him a lot. They’d long ago got into the habit of conversing in the Algerian’s native Arabic, which Ben spoke almost as well as he did French. Abdel was a good-natured guy, invariably cheerful, grinning a mile wide and ever ready with a funny anecdote.

Not today. The moment Ben had walked into the shop, he’d sensed the same change he’d been sensing everywhere.

And when he’d quizzed Abdel about what was wrong, it soon began to make sense. At first nervous and reluctant to talk, Abdel told Ben about the Romanian criminal gang who had steadily been taking over the neighbourhood during the last year.

‘I have nothing against immigrants,’ Abdel said. ‘Why should I? My parents came here in ’65. But these people are like animals. They have come here only to take and destroy. They are greedy for anything they can get. Stealing from tourists isn’t enough for them any more.’ He explained how the Romanians’ enterprise had swelled and their confidence grown at such an alarming rate that within a matter of months they’d started leaning on local businesses and extorting protection money out of them, using the threat of vandalism as their incentive. Now Ben understood why he’d been seeing so many broken windows everywhere. The nearby hardware store he’d visited that morning had been no exception. An assistant had been sweeping glass off the floor as Ben had walked in.

Abdel explained how the Romanians had now started stepping up the pressure, bringing in their heavies to enforce the extortion racket with threats of broken legs, beatings and arson. Meanwhile, they were flooding the neighbourhood with cheap drugs and getting deeper into allied rackets like car theft, burglary and prostitution.

‘Everyone is terrified of them. We are hardworking, decent people. We don’t deserve this. Look what’s happening out there. The streets are empty. People are afraid to go out. Hardly anyone comes into my shop any more, because they’re scared of what might happen if the Romanians turned up.’

‘What about the police?’ Ben asked.

Abdel shrugged. ‘What about them? Some of us got together and made an official complaint. We even told them the address where the gang are all living together like a bunch of bandits, making disgusting films and selling women and drugs. We told them the name of the leader, too.’

‘Which is what?’ Ben asked.

‘He calls himself Dracul.’

Dracul. Ben shook his head. How trite. ‘It means “devil” in Romanian,’ he said.

‘Why would he call himself by such a name?’ Abdel asked, frowning.

‘Probably because he thinks it sounds scary,’ Ben said.

‘He is scary. A big, big man, with long black hair and a scar on his face. He’s easy to recognise. We gave the description to the police. They made us fill out a form and said they would be in touch. Nothing happened. Nobody gives a damn about us little guys.’

Ben sighed. You turned your back for a year, and this was the result of it. The neighbourhood falling into the control of a violent criminal gang wasn’t going to do his chances of selling the apartment any favours, either.

There was more. Abdel told Ben that the Romanians wanted two thousand euros from him, a new monthly payment demand Dracul called ‘respect tax’. They’d given Abdel a number to phone to say he was agreeing to cough up the money. If he didn’t call by three o’clock that afternoon, they’d told him they were going to come and break one arm and one leg. That was so he could still work. Generous. He’d still have to pay, of course. Then if the following month’s payment was late, it would be the other arm and the other leg. The next time after that, they’d promised, Dracul was personally going to have his fun with Abdel’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Faridah, before handing her over to the boys to be gang-raped and beaten to a pulp. Or maybe they’d drug her up and make her the starlet in one of the hardcore movie productions they were selling on the side.

Ben was very unhappy to hear that. It made his fists tighten.

‘What am I going to do?’ Abdel said desperately. ‘I have no money to pay them. I can’t protect my own family from these people.’

‘Do nothing,’ Ben said. ‘Don’t call them. Wait for them to come to you.’

‘But I told you what they’ll do.’

‘Everything will be fine,’ Ben assured him.

After which Ben had gone back to the apartment, started stripping wallpaper, smoked some cigarettes and drunk some coffee, eaten a tin of cassoulet for lunch and bided his time until the afternoon.

Just before three, he’d left the apartment again and walked to his car, taking with him a few hardware store items he’d tossed inside his bag. He’d made the short drive and parked across the street from Abdel’s shop to wait for the Romanians to turn up.

And now here they were, bang on schedule.