The Woman in the Fifth

Fifteen

INSPECTOR JEAN-MARIE COUTARD was a flabby man. He was in his fifties and short — maybe five foot six — with a double chin, a large gut and a red face that made him look self-basting. His clothes were a jumble of contrasting styles and patterns: a check sports jacket, gray trousers, a striped shirt dappled with food stains, a paisley tie. His lack of sartorial interest mirrored his general air of unhealthiness. He had a cigarette screwed into his mouth, and he seemed to be puffing away on it in an attempt to wake himself up. It was only seven fifteen in the morning, and he looked like he had been summoned directly from his bed to this crime scene.

When he arrived, there was already a crowd of people around the tiny bathroom. Three plainclothes policemen, two forensic guys in white coats and latex gloves, a photographer, and a medical man examining the grotesque mess that was Omar. Two plainclothes inspectors then showed up, one of whom was Coutard.

The uniformed cops had been the first on the scene. They came within ten minutes of me racing downstairs and calling them from the phone kiosk at the end of rue de Paradis. Running out to phone them had been an instinctual reaction — and one made in the complete shock of the moment. As soon as I had done so, the thought struck me, They are going to ask where I was when the crime took place. As I couldn’t tell them about my ‘work’, I raced back to my room and ‘unmade’ my bed, hoping that it looked like I had slept there that night. Then I started thinking fast, trying to construct the alibi I would give the cops when they arrived.

I charged downstairs again to let the police in: two young officers who followed me upstairs and tried hard not to blanch when they saw the bloody state of Omar in the toilet. Within moments they were calling for backup. One of them posted himself outside to make certain nobody left the building. The other stepped into my room with me and asked to see my papers. When I handed over the American passport, he looked at me quizzically.

‘Why do you live here?’ he asked.

‘It’s cheap.’

Then he began to ask me some basic questions. What time did I find the body? Where was I last night? (‘I couldn’t sleep, so I went out for a walk.’) What time was that? (‘Around two.’) And where did I go? (‘I just walked along the canal Saint-Martin, then eventually crossed the river and followed the Seine as far as Notre-Dame, then headed back here, stopping at the local patisserie for pains au chocolat.’) Did I know the deceased? (‘We were merely passing acquaintances.’) Did I have any idea who might have done this? (‘None at all.’)

After this brief Q&A, I was told to wait here in my room until the inspector arrived. The cop held on to my passport — and left me alone to my thoughts. My alibi sounded flimsy, full of holes … though, at least, they’d be able to confirm with the guy at the patisserie that I was there around six this morning. I lay down on my bed and shut my eyes and tried to expunge every grisly detail of Omar on that toilet: the splatter-effect crimson blood, the deep oozing gorge around his throat, the fact that his trousers were down and he must have been in mid-bowel movement when the attack happened. Two people must have killed him: one held him down while his partner shoved the toilet brush in his mouth to stifle his screams before slitting his throat. Had Yanna somehow managed to call her husband that night in Turkey to tell him about the ‘rape’, and then he phoned some friends who … ?

No, that was completely implausible — as Yanna told me he was on the night flight back to Paris yesterday. Which meant he would have been out of contact. So rule out Yanna’s husband. But knowing Omar — and how he pissed off everyone who ventured into his path — he must have had a lot of enemies.

That was Inspector Coutard’s first question to me.

‘Did the deceased have any ongoing disputes with anyone?’

I had figured this question would arise and decided to play dumb.

‘I didn’t know the man.’

‘Even though he lived next door to you?’

‘We didn’t speak.’

‘You shared the same floor, the same toilet.’

‘You can share a communal toilet and still not speak with someone.’

Coutard reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out my passport. I tried not to look surprised. He flicked through its pages, stopping at the two sole entry stamps.

‘You entered France on December 28 of last year, via Canada.’

‘That’s right. My connecting flight was from Montreal.’

‘From where?’

‘Chicago.’

‘That is where you last lived in the United States?’

‘No, I lived in …’

And I named the town in Ohio.

‘And what made you come to France on December 28 of last year?’

I was prepared for this.

‘My marriage had fallen apart and I had lost my job at the college where I taught, and I decided to flee my problems, so …’

‘There are no direct flights from Chicago to Paris?’ he asked, and I could see the subtext behind that question: If you flew here via another country, perhaps you weren’t just fleeing a failed marriage.

‘The Air Canada flight via Montreal was the cheapest option.’

‘What sort of work do you do, Monsieur Ricks?’

‘Novelist.’

‘What is the name of your publisher?’

‘I don’t have one.’

‘Ah, so you are an aspiring novelist.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you have lived on the rue de Paradis since … ?’

‘Early January.’

‘An intriguing place for an American to live — but I’m certain you have been asked this question already today.’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘And your neighbor, the late Monsieur Omar Tariq. He was a good neighbor?’

‘We had little contact.’

‘Do you know anything about him?’

‘Nothing at all.’

He nodded, taking this in. Then, ‘No sense whatsoever of who might have done this to him?’

‘Like I said, I stayed out of his way.’

He tapped my passport against his hand, looking directly at me. Then he slipped the passport in his pocket.

‘You will be required to make a statement about all this — so if you wouldn’t mind, I ask that you present yourself at the commissariat de police for the Tenth arrondissement at two this afternoon.’

‘Fine. I’ll be there. And what about my passport?’

‘I’ll keep it until then.’

He left my room. I sat down on the bed and suddenly felt very tired and just a little worried that I was playing it a bit too dumb about having had no contact with Omar. But if I told the truth, I might put myself under suspicion, and they also might start demanding to know what I did with my nights. And if they found out I was working illegally …

My guess was that Omar owed somebody money or had done something grievous enough to be bumped off in such an unpleasant manner. No doubt, the cops would question everyone in the building. No doubt, someone would tip them off as to who was the assailant.

My lack of sleep — it was now 9 a.m. — somehow managed to override the nightmarish image of Omar in death. I nodded off for a few hours, waking with a jolt when I heard something bang against my door. I jumped up from the bed, opened the door, and found four ambulance attendants trying to maneuver a stretcher with the now bagged body of Omar down the stairs. The ambulance guys looked up at me as I stood, half-awake in the doorway. Then, with several audible groans, they continued attempting to inch this bier containing a very overweight dead man down the narrow, circular stairs.

I went back inside and checked the time: 12.48 p.m. I showered and shaved and dressed, choosing conservative clothes for my interview with the police. When I went out into the hallway, there were several technical guys still working on the toilet and Omar’s room, picking up every microfiber in the vicinity. Downstairs, a uniformed cop was still posted outside the door.

‘No one is allowed to leave the building,’ he said.

‘But Inspector Coutard asked to see me at the commissariat de police at two p.m.’

‘Your name?’ he asked me. I gave it to him. He picked up his walkie-talkie and spoke into it. I heard him mention ‘Monsieur Harry Ricks’. There was a static-filled pause, then a voice filled the speaker. The cop lifted it to his ear, then said, ‘D’accord,’ and turned to me.

‘Yes, you are expected at the commissariat de police at two p.m. sharp. Do not be late, monsieur.’

I nodded and hurried off to the Internet cafe. Once inside, Mr Beard immediately shut the front door, locking it behind him.

‘What have you told the police?’ he asked.

‘News travels fast.’

‘What have you told the police?’

‘I’ve said nothing.’

‘Nothing? ‘

‘I told them Omar was my neighbor, I didn’t know him, I had no idea who might kill him, and that’s all.’

‘They ask you about your work?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Not yet? ‘

‘I have to go to the commissariat de police now and make a statement.’

‘You must tell them nothing about your work.’

‘Believe me, I won’t.’

‘You must tell them nothing about what you saw the other night.’

‘As I told you at the time, I saw nothing.’

‘If they ask you what you do—’

‘I will continue to tell them I am a writer. That’s it.

Happy now?’

‘If you say anything else, we will find out. And then—’

‘There is no need to threaten me. I certainly don’t want to be exposed as someone working illegally here. So don’t worry. I’m not going to give the game away.’

‘I don’t trust you.’

‘You have no choice but to. Just as I have no choice but to trust you … even though I don’t either. Now may I have my money, please?’

He reached into his jacket and handed me the usual envelope.

‘You say nothing, life will continue as before,’ he told me.

‘That sounds good to me.’

‘Omar was a pig. He deserved his death.’

I felt like saying, No one — not even gross-out Omar — deserved that sort of gruesome finale. But I held myself in check.

‘See you tomorrow,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ Mr Beard said, ‘tomorrow.’

The commissariat de police for the Tenth arrondissement was located on the rue du Louis Blanc. It was an ordinary squat building — three stories high — which didn’t stand out amid the other squat shabby buildings along this street. There was a man behind the reception desk as I came in. I told him I was here to see Inspector Coutard and gave him my name. He told me to take a seat. The chairs were cheap plastic ones. The walls of the reception area were painted an institutional beige. There were ceiling tiles gone yellow from extended exposure to cigarette smoke, and fluorescent tubes, and posters taped to the walls, exhorting all citizens to be vigilant about bags left on the metro, and to not drink and drive. A framed photo of Chirac hung in a discreet corner of the room. After a few minutes, a youngish man in shirtsleeves — his gun and holster exposed for all to see — popped his head through the door.

‘Monsieur Ricks?’

I stood up. The cop introduced himself as Inspector Leclerc. He ushered me inside and down a flight of steps. We came into an open area, where two men sat shackled to a bench. (I quickly noticed there were two other empty shackles at the far end of this long bench awaiting new customers, as well as a man locked into a small cell adjacent to the bench.)

‘Busy afternoon?’ I asked the inspector.

‘It’s always busy here,’ he said.

I followed him down a corridor and into a cramped office with two desks. Leclerc took a seat at the first one, pushed aside some papers, lit up a cigarette and explained that he would take my statement from me. He then talked me, point by point, through everything that had happened when I discovered Omar, and also asked me (as Coutard had done) about my relationship with my neighbor.

‘I saw him from time to time in the corridor of our building,’ I dictated to Leclerc. ‘I saw him from time to time in the street and around the quartier. Beyond that, we had no additional contact.’

When Leclerc finished typing, he reread the statement to me and asked if I agreed with it. When I nodded yes, he hit a button on his keyboard and a copy whizzed out of an adjoining printer.

‘Please read it, then sign and date it.’

After I had done so, he said, ‘Now we need to fingerprint you.’

‘I thought I was just being called in to make a statement.’

‘You must be fingerprinted as well.’

Am I a suspect here? I felt like asking. But I knew the answer to that question, just as I also knew that if I refused to be fingerprinted, I would be acting guilty.

‘Lead the way,’ I said.

He escorted me to another room — where a technician rolled each of my fingers in ink and then made the necessary imprints. I was pointed to a sink and told I could wash my hands there. As I finished, Leclerc said, ‘You will need to wait outside while I get your statement to Inspector Coutard. If he needs to interview you further, you’ll be summoned to his office.’

‘How long might that be?’

‘It is a busy afternoon …’

He stood up and escorted me to the bench where the two men still sat shackled to its steel frame.

‘You can wait here,’ Leclerc said.

‘You mean, you’re not going to shackle me down?’ I asked.

A sour smile from Leclerc.

‘Not unless you insist.’

The two men on the bench eyed me up and down. When I met the gaze of one of them — and saw a druggy aggression in his dilated pupils — he hissed, ‘What are you staring at, asshole?’

‘Nothing,’ I hissed back.

‘You trying to start something?’

I just shook my head. But when he jumped up to confront me, the chain on his hand stopped his trajectory and caused him to yelp in pain.

‘I’ll get you later,’ he said.

‘Don’t count on it.’

I sat at the far end of the bench and pulled out a new book I was plowing through — a collection of Jacques Prevert’s Paroles. Though I greatly admired his wordplay and imagery, I wished I had brought something more narrativedriven to read. I tried to ignore the clown at the end of the bench. Having been, in his mind, ‘provoked’ because I’d looked at him the wrong way, he continued to jeer at me, until one of the uniformed cops came along and told him to shut up. When he back-talked the cop — ‘You think you scare me, flic? ‘ — the officer took his nightstick and slammed it down a few centimeters away from where he was sitting. The guy jumped in fright.

‘Keep shooting off your mouth, the next time it will land between your legs.’

I pulled the volume of Prevert higher up around my face.

Either Coutard was truly busy or he was deliberately ignoring me, as half an hour passed without a word from him. I stopped a uniformed officer and asked him if he could find out whether or not Coutard wanted to see me. Twenty more minutes passed, during which time the thought struck me: This is the law-enforcement version of ‘passive aggressive’. I stopped another officer.

‘Might you please find out if Inspector Coutard—’

‘He will call you when he’s ready.’

‘But I have been waiting nearly an hour—’

‘So? An hour is nothing. Sit down and he’ll call you when—’

‘Sir, please—’

‘Sit!’ This wasn’t a request; rather, an order. I did as told. The thug — still chained to the bench — glowered at me.

‘They’ve got you by the balls, asshole.’

‘And you’re the guy chained to the bench.’

‘Fuck you.’

The uniformed cop — halfway out of the room — spun around and pointed his baton at me. ‘You — no talking.’

‘This guy started it—’

‘I said, no talking.’

I nodded, looking meek. The psycho laughed. I tried to sink back into Prevert’s verses. Psycho Boy continued cackling to himself and occasionally whispering to the other shackled guy. Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty, then …

This is crazy. Just get up and leave — and let them try to stop you.

But as I was seriously considering this stupid idea, Coutard stuck his head around the door.

‘Monsieur Ricks …’

He motioned for me to follow him. As we left the holding area and headed down a corridor, he said, ‘I am sorry they kept you waiting with the local trash.’

I said nothing — pretty damn certain that I was placed next to Psycho Boy to unnerve me … which, truth be told, he succeeded in doing.

‘Just in here,’ he said, steering me into a more substantial office than the one occupied by Leclerc. There were two functional armchairs facing a large desk, several framed citations, the ubiquitous photograph of Chirac, and a brimming ashtray next to his computer terminal. He lit up a fresh cigarette and picked up a pair of bifocal glasses and placed them on his nose.

‘So, Monsieur Ricks … I have read your statement. Interesting.’

‘Interesting?’ I asked cautiously.

‘Yes, interesting. In fact … very interesting.’

‘In what way?’

‘In your statement, you repeat what you told me in your chambre yesterday — that you only had minimal contact with Monsieur Omar. And yet, the gentleman who rented you the room, Monsieur Sezer, made a statement to us, where he stated that you had an ongoing war with Monsieur Omar over his sanitary habits … specifically, the condition of the toilet you both shared.’

‘That’s true, but—’

‘The fact that Monsieur Omar was found dead with a toilet brush in his mouth—’

‘Now hang on a minute—’

‘You have an unfortunate habit of interrupting me, Monsieur Ricks.’

‘Sorry,’ I mumbled.

‘I repeat: according to Monsieur Sezer, you repeatedly complained to him about Monsieur Omar’s lack of hygiene. Couple this with the fact that a toilet brush was found lodged in Monsieur Omar’s mouth, and this leads one to presume that the murderer was making some sort of symbolic point about the gentleman’s disregard for communal clealiness. So …’

I raised my hand. Coutard peered down at me over his bifocals.

‘You have a question?’ he asked.

‘More of a statement.’

‘You have already made a statement.’

‘But I want to add to that statement.’

‘You have signed that statement.’

‘All I want to say is—’

‘You wish to amend your statement.’

‘I didn’t kill Omar.’

A shrug from the inspector.

‘You expect me to accept that as truth?’

‘Consider this: I called you to report the crime.’

‘In sixty-five percent of the murders I have investigated the actual killer reported the crime.’

‘I am part of the thirty-five percent.’

‘Sticking a toilet brush down your victim’s throat while cutting his jugular … It is most original.’

‘I didn’t—’

‘You say you didn’t, but you had a motive: rage at his disgusting habits. Let me guess: he never flushed the toilet after taking a shit, and then mocked you when you tried to get him to amend his vile ways. Americans, I know, have a thing about cleanliness … and smoking.’

He exhaled a small cloud as he said that.

‘I have nothing against cigarettes.’

‘I applaud you for such open-mindedness. You also have no objections to living in cramped conditions. In fact, I would posit that you might be the only American living on the rue de Paradis in a chambre de bonne.’

‘It’s cheap.’

‘We do know how you found the room. A certain Adnan Pafnuk, who worked at the Hotel Select on the rue Francois Millet in the Sixteenth. You were a guest at this hotel from December 28 of last year for a period of ten days, during which time you fell sick with the flu and had a dispute with the day clerk — a Monsieur Brasseur …’

His face was impassive as he said this, but I could see him simultaneously studying mine … and registering my growing nervousness as the revelation hit me: I am the prime suspect here.

‘Brasseur was a deeply unpleasant man.’

‘So we have learned from anyone who worked with him. Nonetheless, it is also intriguing to note that — just as you had a little war with Monsieur Omar and he was found dead on his beloved toilet — so you also had a little war with Monsieur Brasseur and he was struck down by a car—’

‘You don’t think that I—’

‘What did I tell you about interrupting me, monsieur?’

I hung my head and wished a hole would open up in the floor and whisk me out of this nightmare. Coutard continued, ‘We have, of course, checked the motor vehicles records. You do not own a car, nor did you rent a car on the day that Monsieur Brasseur was run down. He remains paralysed — and it appears that the condition is permanent. But who’s to say that you didn’t hire somebody to mow him down?’

‘My motive being … ?’

‘Wasn’t there a dispute about money?’

‘He overcharged me for the doctor who came to see me when I was ill.’

‘Voila: the motive.’

‘I am not in the habit of running down people who cheat me, any more than I cut the throats of neighbors who treat the communal toilet like an open sewer.’

‘Perhaps. But the fact that your fingerprints are all over the toilet brush that had been shoved down Monsieur Omar’s throat—’

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 maitresse.’

‘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 cafe and write on my laptop. But many nights I am at home.’

‘But the owner of the boulangerie on the rue du Faubourg Poissonniere 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 cafe. Which cafe 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 flaneur ?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Might you also be a flaneur who holds down a full-time job?’

‘I don’t have a carte de sejour.’

‘That has never stopped the vast majority of immigres 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.’