The Woman in the Fifth

Sixteen

THEY’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 Ecoles — 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 patisserie for two pains au chocolat. You sleep until two p.m. You pick up your wages at the Internet cafe on rue des Petites Ecuries. You generally eat at a cafe 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 Linne 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 cafes, 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.

‘Where the fuck were you?’

‘What?’ I asked.

‘You always pick up your money at two thirty p.m. Today you’re not there …’

‘Overslept.’

‘You no oversleep again,’ he said, tossing my pay envelope on the floor. Then he turned and left.

I picked up the envelope. I went back inside. My grogginess had suddenly vanished, replaced by a deeper, unnerving realization: They really are following me now. Any moves out of the ordinary will be jumped upon in a nanosecond.

I forced myself into the shower. I was dressed and heading out the door ten minutes later. I turned around three times as I hurried toward the metro. No one there. But they were there. They knew my every move.

I was back on the street by five fifteen, hurrying down the rue de Paradis. I passed the joint which Yanna co-owned. I made the mistake of glancing in as I passed by. Yanna was behind the bar. Our eyes met — and immediately I could tell that something was very wrong. Within moments, she was out on the street, screaming at me. With good reason. Her face looked like it had come under extended assault. Both eyes were blackened, her lip had been split open in two places, there were gashes above her eyebrows, and her right cheek had turned an inky purple.

‘You stupid bastard,’ she shouted. ‘I follow your advice, I tell him what Omar did, and look what he does to me.

Starts telling me someone informed him you’d been fucking me too.’

‘I’m so sorry—’

‘Sorry? ‘ she shouted. ‘The bastard nearly killed me … and now he’s going to kill you. So much for your brilliant “plan”—’

‘You have to go to the police—’

‘And really end up dead? You understand nothing, American. Nothing. You better run away now. Far away. Otherwise you’ll end up dead. Like Omar.’

‘He killed Omar?’

‘Impossible. I didn’t tell him until the morning he got in. Omar was dead by then. But he knew about Omar’s death by the time he walked in here. Just as he also knew I’d been stupid enough to fuck you. That’s the part I can’t figure out … how he found out about us …’

Because Sezer must have called him in Turkey before his departure and told him. Maybe he also threw Omar into the mix, and Yanna’s husband made a phone call before boarding the plane and Omar received his mid-bowel movement tracheotomy that night.

‘… and why he hasn’t killed you yet.’

‘I’ll make myself scarce,’ I said.

‘Shit really follows you around, doesn’t it?’

I couldn’t argue with that.

‘I’m sorry you’re in such bad shape,’ I said.

‘As soon as I feel better, I’m planning to beat him to death.’

It was five forty by the time I reached Margit’s apartment. She was not pleased.

‘You cannot be late like this,’ she said as soon as she opened the door. She was wearing a black silk robe. It was half-open.

‘I can explain.’

‘Don’t explain,’ she said, pulling me inside. ‘Fuck me.’

‘I can’t do that,’ I said, dodging her grasp.

‘Playing hard to get?’ she said, reaching for me and thrusting her crotch against mine.

‘It’s not that …’

‘Shut up then,’ she said, pulling her head toward mine and trying to kiss me. But I broke free.

‘I just can’t,’ I said.

‘Yes, you can,’ she said, reaching for my crotch.

‘Will you stop!’

My tone made her freeze. Then she shrugged and walked away from me, past her bed and on to the sofa in her living room. She lit up a cigarette and said, ‘Let me guess: you’re in love …’

‘I have a sexually transmitted disease.’

She considered that for a moment, puffing away on her cigarette.

‘The fatal kind?’ she finally asked.

‘Chlamydia.’

‘Just that?’

‘I’m sorry …’

‘For what?’

‘I might have infected you.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because … I just doubt it. Anyway, chlamydia is not the end of civilization as we know it.’

‘I’m aware of that. Still …’

‘Ah yes. Guilt, guilt and more guilt. It’s nothing, Harry.’

‘How can you say that?’

‘Because I’ve had chlamydia myself. Courtesy of my husband. He gave it to me around a week before he was killed. Picked it up from some Sorbonne hottie he was fucking. I was rather aggrieved at the time — mainly because it hurt like hell every time I peed. In fact, on the night he and Judit were killed, our fight started with me telling him I now understood why he wasn’t that interested in sex with me … courtesy of his little girlfriend. He became outraged that I would mention this in front of Judit. He stormed out with her. And that’s the last time I ever saw them alive …’

She poured herself a whisky and sipped it.

‘So, to tell the truth,’ she said, ‘chlamydia is no big deal for me.’

‘That’s a terrible story,’ I said.

‘All stories are fundamentally terrible,’ she said. ‘But you’re not just worried about a sexually transmitted disease, Harry. It’s more than that, isn’t it?’

‘I’m in a lot of trouble,’ I said, and the entire story came pouring out. When I finished she was stubbing out her second cigarette.

‘This Monsieur Sezer … you think he set you up?’

‘Think? I’m sure of it.’

‘So he murdered Omar?’

‘Sezer would never grubby his hands like that. But he does have this resident thug who probably does all his dirty work for him.’

‘Any thoughts on why he wanted Omar dead?’

‘Everyone hated Omar.’

‘You especially.’

‘I didn’t want him dead.’

‘True. But you did intimate you wanted him out of your life. Now he’s out of your life. The problem is, Sezer is now in your life …’

‘Not just that — he’s having me tailed everywhere.’

‘I think he wants you to think that.’

‘If he knows where I eat lunch, if he knows I come here every three days …’

‘True, maybe he has a couple of flunkies who have tailed you. But all the time? That’s a bit labor-intensive, don’t you think? He’s relying on his powers of intimidation to keep you in place. Anyway, if he wanted you dead … you’d probably be dead by now.’

‘It’s Yanna’s husband who will probably beat me to death with a hammer if Sezer gives him the go-ahead.’

‘But Sezer evidently wants you alive …’

‘For the time being.’

‘How badly was Yanna beaten?’

I gave her the full picture. Her face tightened as I explained the extent of the injuries inflicted on Yanna.

‘Bastards,’ she said. ‘That’s what they did to my mother.’

‘Sorry?’ I said.

‘The secret police … when they came to kill my father, they also beat the shit out of my mother. Actually beat her around the face.’

‘When did this happen?’ I asked.

‘May 11, 1957. I was seven years old. My father was a newspaper editor — a one-time Party member who turned very anti-Communist after the 1956 Uprising was crushed by Russian tanks. Since martial law was declared, he had gone underground and was publishing a samizdat newspaper — very anti-Kadar and his regime — which was being run from a variety of safe houses around Budapest. Father was never at home — he was essentially on the run all the time — but I remember these men in suits or leather jackets frequently waking us up in the middle of the night, and sometimes ransacking the apartment and even pulling me from bed to see if Father was hiding underneath it.

‘This went on for months. I kept asking Mother, “Why are these men after Papa? When do I get to see Papa again? ” Mother simply told me to be patient … that we would be reunited with Papa soon … but that I should stop asking questions about his whereabouts and that, if anyone at school asked me where he was, I was to say that I had absolutely no idea.

‘Then, one Friday, Mother said, “I have a nice surprise. We’re going away for the weekend.” But she wouldn’t tell me where exactly where we were heading. So we got into our little car and drove off after dark. Hours later — I had no idea how long we’d been on the road, as I’d fallen asleep in the back — we turned off down a dirt road and eventually stopped at this tiny cottage in the woods. There, inside the cottage, was Papa. I ran into his arms and wouldn’t let go of him … even when Mother, who was crying with happiness to see him, tried to hug him. Papa was mine … until I got tired and they put me to bed on the lumpy sofa in the front room. I remembered waking once or twice in the middle of the night when I heard groans from the bedroom — not knowing what they were doing at the time — but then falling back to sleep again … until, suddenly, there was this loud pounding at the door. The next thing I knew, there were loud voices and Mother came running out of the bedroom and I turned around and saw Papa trying to scramble out of the bedroom window. Then the front door burst open, and several policemen and two men in suits came marching in. One of the cops went running into the bedroom and pulled Papa back from the window and started beating him with his stick. My mother began to scream — and a plainclothes officer grabbed her while his colleague repeatedly punched her in the face. Now I started to scream, but the other cop held me down while his colleague dragged my father outside. The officer who was beating Mother stopped, and pushed her on to the sofa. Her face was a bloody pulp and she was evidently unconscious. Now he started shouting orders and dashed to join the cop who pulled Papa outside, then ducked back in once to grab a chair. His colleague — certain that Mother wasn’t moving — ran out as well. There was more shouting — then the cop holding me lifted me up and frogmarched me outside.

‘First light was in the sky — and what I saw there I will never forget. My father — his hands behind his back, a rope around his neck that had been suspended from a tree — was being forced to climb on top of a chair placed right under the tree. When he refused, one of the plainclothes cops grabbed him in the crotch and squeezed so hard that Papa doubled over and the two men forced him on the chair, and I was crying and trying to turn away, and the same officer who’d grabbed Papa in the crotch shouted to the cop holding me, “Make her watch.” So he grabbed my ponytail and forced me to see the other plainclothes guy kick the chair, and Papa wriggling and jerking and coughing up blood as …’

Margit stopped and sipped her whisky.

‘It must have taken him a good two minutes to die. And do you know what one of the plainclothes officers — they were Secret Police — told me? “Now you know what we do to traitors.“’

‘Jesus Christ,’ I said. ‘I never knew …’

‘Because I never told you.’

‘How the fuck could they have done that to you … a little girl … ?’

‘Because they were bastards. And because they could do this. They had the power. They made the rules. They could force a seven-year-old-girl to watch her father being lynched.’

‘What happened after?’

‘They bundled me into a car and took me off to a State orphanage. A hellhole. I was there for three weeks. Refused to leave my bed, except to go to the bathroom. Refused to speak to anyone. I remember they sent doctors to see me. I said nothing. They were always talking in whispers to the nurses and the orphanage people, saying things like, “She’s traumatized … She’s in shock … She has to be fed.” But I refused to eat. So they eventually tied me down to a bed and stuck needles in my arms and fed me that way.

‘After three weeks, one of the matrons of the orphanage came in and said, “Your mother’s here. You’re leaving.” I didn’t feel elation. I didn’t cry with happiness. I felt nothing but numbness.

‘Mother was waiting for me in the director’s office. Her face had only half-healed. One eye was half-closed, the other … she was never able to use that eye again. She came over and put her arms around me, but there was no strength to her hug, no comfort. Something had been killed in her. She was accompanied by two men in suits. When I saw them I immediately recoiled — and hid behind my mother — because I was certain they were the same sort of men who had killed my father. Even they were embarrassed by my fear of them, and one of them whispered to my mother who then whispered to me, “They want you to know they will do you no harm.”

‘But I still refused to come up and face everyone until Mother crouched down beside me and said, “We have been given permission to leave Hungary. These men will drive us to the Austrian border, and there we will be met by other men who will bring us to a city called Vienna. And we will start a new life there.”

‘Again, I said nothing. Except, “Those men who killed my father … will they hurt us again?”

‘One of the suits crouched down and spoke to me. “No, they will never hurt you again,” he said. “But I can promise you they will pay terribly for what they did.”

‘As I found out from my mother some years later, those men with her at the orphanage were also from the Secret Police. My father’s death had been something of a big deal. One of the uniformed officers who had been on the scene when he was murdered had a crisis of conscience, and made contact with the Reuters correspondent in Budapest. The story went everywhere — especially the bit about me being forced to watched Papa’s execution. The fact that the cop who yanked my ponytail to make me keep my eyes open was the same one who ratted out his colleagues and went to the Western press … well, I suppose it shows that even the police sometimes have a conscience.’

‘What happened next?’

‘There was a small international cause celebre. It was the height of the Cold War, and the press outside of Hungary jumped on the story — Communist savagery and all that. Anyway, the Kadar government were under a lot of pressure to “solve the problem”. So they offered my mother and me free passage out of the country and a little money to start a new life in the West.’

‘And what happened to the two plainclothes officers?’

‘Their names were Bodo and Lovas. After we left Hungary they were put on a big public trial and sentenced to many years of hard labor. But through sources in the country, I found out that, after the trial, they were secretly transferred out to the intelligence division of the Hungarian Embassy in Bucharest … which, I suppose, was a prison sentence of sorts. Two years later, they were back working in Budapest in big jobs.’

‘And since then … ?’

‘Dead.’

‘You know that for a fact?’

She nodded.

‘And the cop who ratted on his comrades?’

‘After he leaked everything to the Reuters man, he did what every true soldier would do who betrayed his cause. He went home and blew his head off. The ethical ones among us often pay a very high price.’

Silence. She finished her cigarette. I topped up her whisky glass. She didn’t touch it. I tried to take her hand in mine. She pushed me away.

‘You expect me to accept your sympathy?’ she asked.

I ignored her anger — as I knew she would want me to — and instead asked, ‘How could you have ever gotten over something like that?’

‘You can’t — and I didn’t. But to those bastards, it was war. And when it’s war you can do whatever you want. And I don’t really want to say anything more about this, except … now you know why I hate any man who hits a woman in the face.’

Then, ‘You are going to have to kill Yanna’s husband.’

‘Are you insane?’ I said.

‘He will kill you.’

‘Only if Sezer tells him to. And if Sezer has me bumped off, the cops will immediately know that he was behind it—’

‘If the cops even care. You could “disappear” and who would notice?’

‘I’m not killing Yanna’s husband,’ I said. ‘I could never kill anyone.’

‘Everyone is capable of murder, Harry. You must remember that Yanna’s husband is a thug — and one whose pride has been damaged by the fact that you fucked his wife. Where he comes from, that’s up there with genocide and pedophilia in the catalogue of human horrors. Sezer might hold him off for a while … but he is going to kill you. Be absolutely certain about that.’

After leaving Margit’s apartment, I took the metro over to Les Halles and a sporting goods shop that I passed once in that subterranean shopping center, and was open late this evening. I stopped a clerk and said, ‘I know this probably sounds very American, but you wouldn’t happen to sell baseball bats by any chance?’

‘Straight ahead, then turn right,’ he said.

So much for me thinking I’d have to explain what a baseball bat is.

Ten minutes later, I walked back into the metro at Les Halles, carrying a full-sized Louisville Slugger. Yes, several passers-by did stare at me — no doubt wondering what I was doing with such a threatening object in a metro — but I didn’t care. If Yanna’s husband — or any of his goon friends — did try to jump me, at least the baseball bat would give me a fighting chance (unless, of course, he used a gun).

As I walked out of the metro at Chateau d’Eau — baseball bat in hand — several people actually crossed the road when they saw me coming toward them. I took a different route to work, dodging the rue de Paradis, cutting down some small back alleys, and always carrying the bat up against my chest, while spinning around every twenty paces to see who was following me.

I reached work. I bolted the door behind me. I drank coffee all night and kept my eyes glued to the screen. An image kept filling my head: the seven-year-old Margit being frogmarched out by the cop. No wonder she tried to cut her throat after the death of Zoltan and Judit. How much tragedy can one person bear? How do you get up in the morning and negotiate the day, knowing that you have twice lost — in horrible circumstances — the people closest to you?

My admiration for her had increased sevenfold. But so too had my unease with her cut-and-dried solutions to things: ‘You must kill Yanna’s husband.’

No, I must dodge Yanna’s husband and somehow hope the police work out who really killed Omar and get my passport back and …

Vanish.

Because now — after Sezer’s threats and Margit’s warnings about the inevitable — I knew that I had few choices open to me.

But I couldn’t just disappear right now. Not with my movements being so closely observed, and with my passport in the pocket of Inspector Coutard.

Say the cops followed me here tonight? How would I explain that one? ‘Fess up — ‘All right, I do have a job‘ — and hope whatever they found downstairs wasn’t so gruesome that … ?

You can work out that one once they’ve arrested you. And maybe getting arrested is the safest option going right now.

But if they arrest you, they can pin everything on you. And they will. Better to tough it out, get the passport returned, and skip town.

You could buy false documents … and be elsewhere tomorrow.

And be on the run for the rest of my life? And never see my daughter again? And always be looking over my shoulder? And …

You’ll never see your daughter again. And you’ll always be looking over your shoulder … unless you kill Yanna’s husband.

You’re talking melodrama. If I flee to the States …

You’ll still never rest easy. Get rid of him.

Shut up.

You know you can do it.

Says you. Look what happened when Omar was silenced. His dirty little secret — with which he attempted to blackmail me — was still whispered into the ear of Yanna’s husband. So if I kill Yanna’s husband, then I also might as well kill Sezer and Mr Tough Guy and Mr Beard … since they all could still get me … all could want me dead.

When 6 a.m. came, my brain felt fried. My all-night anxiety had left me feeling as if I had overdosed on Dexedrine or some other form of high-octane speed. As I walked down the stairs to the front door, the entire grubby concrete hallway seemed to blur and take on a certain strange liquidity, as if it could form another shape or dimension around me. I hoisted the bat, holding it against me the way a soldier on inspection might keep his rifle crossed against his chest. At the patisserie, the Algerian guy behind the counter gave me a scared look when he saw the weapon.

‘It’s just a precaution,’ I told him. ‘Just self-defence in case they try to get me.’

‘Monsieur, do you want your pains au chocolat, comme d’habitude?’ he asked.

‘You see them, you tell them I used to be a pinch hitter on my high-school baseball team, so I really know how to swing one of these—’

‘Monsieur, please. There is no need to …’

That’s when I realized I was brandishing the bat and also talking in English.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ I said, switching back into French. ‘Very overtired. Very …’

‘No problem, sir,’ he said, handing me the usual bag with the pains au chocolat.

‘Don’t know what’s wrong. Don’t—’

‘Two euros, sir,’ he said, still proffering the bag.

I threw five on the counter and took the bag and headed off.

‘Don’t you want the change?’

‘I want sleep.’

Did I sound spooked, maybe a little insane? Absolutely. But I knew that things would all look a lot better after eight hours of sleep.

Actually, things wouldn’t look better at all.

I turned the corner into the rue de Paradis. I reached my doorway. I punched in the code and went up to my room. I passed the toilet. It was still sealed off with police tape, forcing me to always use the toilet on the upper floor. I opened my door, leaned the bat against a wall, undressed, climbed beneath the sheets and—

There was a loud pounding on the door, followed by one uttered word, ‘Police!’

I blinked and looked at the bedside clock: 6.23 a.m. Great. I’d been asleep for maybe ten minutes.

‘Police!’

More heavy knocking. Part of me wanted to play dumb and hope they’d go away and let me sleep.

‘Police!’

I was about to say something, but the door burst open and two uniformed officers came charging in. Before I knew it, they’d forced me to put on a pair of pants and a jacket and had handcuffed me and frogmarched me downstairs and into a car that had now pulled up in front.

Ten minutes later, I was in the commissariat de police of the Tenth arrondissement, sitting in front of Inspector Leclerc. My hands were no longer cuffed behind my back. Instead, one of my wrists had been chained to the metal chair where I had been placed … and the chair itself bolted to the floor. The two arresting officers had brought me in here, attached me to the chair and left me to my own devices for around twenty minutes. Then Leclerc arrived, carrying my baseball bat in one hand.

‘Good morning, Monsieur Ricks,’ he said, sitting down behind his desk. ‘I presume you know what this is?’

‘Why am I here?’ I asked.

‘Please answer the question.’

‘A baseball bat.’

‘Very good. And I presume you also know that we just found this bat in your chambre.’

‘Can you search somebody’s place without a permit?’

‘Answer the question, monsieur. Is this your bat?’

‘I’m answering no questions until I know why I’m here.’

‘You don’t know why you’re here?’ he asked, studying my face with care.

‘No idea.’

‘Do you know a Monsieur Attani?’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘He runs a bar on the rue de Paradis — a bar where you have been seen to drink on several occasions.’

I tensed. Leclerc noticed this.

‘Do you know his wife, Madame Yanna Attani?’

I felt a sweat break on my forehead. I said nothing.

‘I take your silence to mean—’

‘I know her,’ I said.

‘Then you must also know Monsieur Attani?’

‘We’ve never been formally introduced.’

‘Even though you were formally introduced to his wife. In fact, word has it that you were intimately acquainted with his wife … that Monsieur Attani was made aware of your intimate acquaintance upon his return from Turkey a few days ago, and was heard publicly to say that he was planning to kill you. So … were you aware of these threats?’

I went silent again.

‘We need to know your whereabouts last night.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we have reason to believe that you assaulted Monsieur Attani with this bat.’

‘He was assaulted?’

‘He is currently in hospital, fighting for his life.’

‘Oh, my God …’

‘Why are you sounding shocked, when it was clearly you who assaulted him?’

‘I didn’t—’

‘You have a motive — he threatened to kill you. Perhaps you were so madly in love with his wife—’

‘I didn’t—’

‘And now we have found the weapon used to smash his head in—’

‘His head was smashed in?’

‘He is in intensive care with a crushed cranium, a crushed face and two crushed kneecaps. He is brain-dead and will not survive the day. The assailant was very violent and used a hefty circular object, like a baseball bat.’

‘I swear to you—’

‘Where were you last night?’

‘I only bought the bat to protect myself after Omar was found—’

‘Where were you last night?’

‘If you run forensic tests on the bat, you’ll see it’s clean.’

‘Where were you last night? And I will not repeat the question again. Answer it or I will call an examining magistrate and have you formally charged with murder.’

Silence. I could feel the sweat now cascading down my face. I knew there was only one alibi I could give — and that she might hate me for implicating her in all this, but she’d still cover for me.

‘I was at my girlfriend’s place,’ I said.

Leclerc pursed his lips. He didn’t like that one bit.

‘Her name?’

I told him.

‘Address?’

I gave him that too.

He picked up the phone. I heard him read out Margit’s name and her address in the Fifth. Then he hung up and said, ‘We will be keeping you here, pending further inquiries.’

‘I’d like to talk to a lawyer.’

‘But why? If your girlfriend vouches for you, you get to walk out of here.’

‘I’d like to talk to a lawyer.’

‘Do you have a lawyer?’

‘No, but …’

He hit an intercom button on his desk, spoke briefly into it, then stood up.

‘My superior, Inspector Coutard, will, no doubt, be speaking with you before too long.’

Then he left. A few moments later, two uniformed officers came in. They unshackled me from the chair, recuffed my hands behind my back, then marched me down several flights of stairs, through a maze of corridors. Then we emerged in that holding area in which I had waited for Coutard yesterday. Only this time I wasn’t going to be left unshackled on the bench. No, this time I was being placed directly in the cell located next to this bench. I started to protest, saying something like, ‘I want to talk to a lawyer,’ but one of the cops pulled hard on the cuffs, making certain they dug deep into my skin.

‘Shut up,’ he said as his colleague unlocked the cell door. I was shoved inside. I was ordered to lie face down on the concrete bed located in one corner of this tiny cell. The bed had a bare dirty mattress, a pillow that was a blotchy canvas of dried blood and snot, a thin dirty blanket. I did as requested. The cop uncuffed me, while also informing me that if I did anything stupid — like taking a swing at him — his colleague had his cosh in his hand and would think nothing of beating me senseless.

‘A taste of your own medicine, after what you did to your lover’s husband.’

‘I promise you I’ll behave.’

‘Smart boy,’ he said, removing the cuffs, then added, ‘You can get up from that bed once we have left the cell and the door has been closed. Understood?’

‘Yes, sir.’

After the cell door closed behind him, however, I didn’t get up. Rather, I gripped the thin mattress and buried my head against the filthy pillow, thinking, I’m dead.

I reached down for the blanket. I pulled it over me. The only good thing about not yet having slept was that, finding myself in a horizontal position, exhaustion overtook me and I was vanished from this terrible world in moments.

And then a voice said, ‘Get up.’

The voice came from a metal slit in the cell door. I glanced at my wrist and remembered they had earlier taken my watch off me, along with my belt and shoelaces. I felt stiff all over and grubby and parched.

‘What time is it, please?’

‘Five twenty.’

I had been asleep all day.

‘Get up,’ the voice said again. ‘Inspector Coutard wants to see you.’

‘Can I use the toilet first?’ I asked, pointing to the stainlesssteel commode next to the bed.

‘Make it fast.’

After I finished peeing, the officer opened the cell and cuffed my hands behind my back and started leading me back up through the maze of corridors we’d traveled earlier that morning. Coutard was seated behind his desk when we entered. A lit cigarette was in his mouth. He was reading a file and looked up at me over his half-moon glasses.

‘You can uncuff him,’ he told the officer. When this was done, Coutard motioned for me to sit in the metal chair facing his desk. The cop was about to recuff me to the chair, but Coutard said, ‘No need.’ Then looking at me again, he added, ‘You look like you could use a coffee.’

‘That would be nice.’

He motioned to the cop who disappeared into the corridor. Then he returned to studying the file, deliberately ignoring me for the moment. The cop returned with a small white plastic cup and handed it to me. It was hot to the touch, but I still downed it in one go.

‘Thank you,’ I said to both the cop and the inspector. Coutard put down his file. He now faced me square on.

‘Inspector Leclerc informed me that you said you spent last evening at the apartment of a woman friend … a Madame Margit Kadar, resident of 13 rue Linne, Fifth arrondissement. Is that correct?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Naturally, we investigated this. We sent several of our men to Madame Kadar’s apartment. And I regret to inform you that we discovered that Madame Kadar is dead.’

The news was like a mule kick to the stomach.

‘That can’t be true,’ I finally said.

‘It is, I am afraid, completely true,’ he said.

I put my head in my hands. Not Margit. Please, not Margit.

‘What happened?’

‘Madame Kadar killed herself.’

‘What?’ I whispered.

‘Madame Kadar took her own life.’

‘But I saw her yesterday. When did this happen?’

Coutard stared right at me. And said, ‘Madame Kadar killed herself in 1980.’