The Woman in the Fifth

Nineteen

‘SO WHAT DO you want to know?’ she asked.

‘Everything,’ I said.

‘Everything? ‘ she said after a sharp laugh. ‘As if that would explain—’

‘Are you dead?’

‘Have another drink, Harry.’

She pushed a bottle of Scotch toward me.

‘Fuck your Scotch,’ I said. ‘Are you dead?’

We were sitting on her sofa. It was a few minutes after her razor attack. My hand was now bandaged. She insisted on dressing the wound and wrapping it in gauze moments after cutting her own throat. I was in such shock — both from the pain of the sliced hand and her bloodless suicide — that I allowed her to lead me to the sofa and pour me a steadying whisky (I downed it in one go) and play nurse on the hand she had cut with such swift deftness.

‘How’s the pain?’ she asked, pouring me a second whisky and handing me the glass.

‘It hurts,’ I said, throwing back the whisky, and not thinking too much about how the alcohol would deaden the effects of the antibiotics I was taking.

‘I don’t think any of the tendons were damaged,’ she said, taking my hand and checking its mobility.

‘That’s wonderful news. Are you dead?’

She refilled my glass. I drank.

‘What did the police tell you?’ she asked.

‘That you slashed Dupre to death and left a note: For Judit and Zoltan. Is that true?’

‘It is.’

‘And then you fled to Hungary and hunted down Bodo and Lovas.’

‘That is correct.’

‘They also showed me Hungarian police reports. They said you mutilated both men before killing them.’

‘That is also correct.’

‘You cut off their fingers and gouged out their eyes?’

‘I didn’t gouge out Lovas’s eyes because I didn’t have enough time. But yes, I did cut off all their fingers and I did blind Bodo before cutting his throat—’

‘You’re insane.’

‘I was insane. Insane with grief. With rage. With an absolute need for revenge. I thought if I killed the men who killed the most important people in my life, somehow the fury that consumed me would cease.’

‘But you just didn’t kill them. You butchered them.’

‘That is also correct. I butchered them in a completely premeditated way … and with great malice aforethought. I was determined to make them pay for what they did to me.’

‘But to cut off their fingers?’

‘Dupre didn’t suffer that fate. I stabbed him repeatedly in the stomach and arms and made him look me in the face — so he could hear me tell him how he destroyed my life — before I plunged the knife into his heart and then cut his throat.’

‘And then you left a note and took a shower and left all your clothes behind.’

‘They did get very bloody during the attack. But yes, I had planned it all out. And yes, after administering the coup de grace I used his bathroom to shower. I left the note. I made myself some coffee, as I had some time to kill before the first train left at five twenty-three … funny how I can still remember all such exact details. I reached the Gare du Nord forty minutes later. I collected my bag and bought my ticket and boarded the train. I splurged on a first-class couchette — so I had a compartment to myself. I remember giving the porter my passport and a large tip and telling him I didn’t want to be woken up at the German or Austrian borders. Then I took off my clothes and got into the couchette and slept soundly for the next eight hours, by which time we were somewhere near Stuttgart—’

‘You slept soundly after murdering a man?’

‘I had been up all night. I was tired. And the adrenalin rush … well, it did exhaust me.’

‘Did you feel better after killing Dupre?’

‘A crazed numbness best describes it. Ever since I had decided on this course of action, I had been operating like an automaton. You do this, you do that, you go here, you go there. It was all carefully plotted out in my mind. Point by point.’

‘Including your own suicide?’

‘That wasn’t part of the plan.’

‘So you are dead?’

‘I’ll get to that — but only after I tell you about Bodo and Lovas.’

‘I don’t want to hear about how you tortured them.’

‘Yes, you do — and you have no choice but to listen.

Otherwise you won’t find out what you want to know.’

I reached for the Scotch, poured myself two fingers, and threw it back.

‘Tell me then,’ I said.

‘Some weeks before I set my plan in motion, I contacted a friend in Budapest — a man who, like my father, was part of the entire samizdat newspaper brigade that operated for a time in the fifties. He was now in his seventies … and had done time in prison for his crimes of talking back to the State. He had been “rehabilitated” — though he’d also been tortured so badly during his “re-education” that he could no longer walk. I had made one journey back to Budapest in 1974, right after I had become a French citizen. I had a need to see it again, I suppose, as an adult — and had taken tea with this gentleman at his apartment. We couldn’t talk openly — he was certain the place was bugged — but he did ask me if I’d push him out in his wheelchair in a nearby park. Once we were outside, I asked him if he could find the whereabouts of the men who executed my father in front of me. He said, “It’s a small country … everybody can be found. But are you sure you want to find them?”

‘I said, “Not now. But one day, perhaps …” He told me that when that day arrived, I should inform him by mail that “I would like to meet up with our friends“, and he would take care of the rest.

‘So, six years later, when I decided to regler les comptes, I sent him a letter. He wrote back, saying, “Our friends are alive and well and living in Budapest.” I made my plans, deposited my bag at the Gare de l’Est, and cut Henri Dupre’s throat. When I arrived in Hungary I went directly to this gentleman’s apartment. He was now a very old man, very infirm. But he smiled when he saw me and told me he’d like to head out to the park. Once I had wheeled him outside, he handed me a piece of paper and said, “Here are their addresses. Is there anything else you need?” I told him, “A gun.” He said, “No problem.” When we went back to his apartment, he sent me rummaging around an attic storage room for a shotgun that his father used for hunting back when Charles I was our King. He even provided me with a saw to shorten the barrel. As I left the apartment — with the gun in my bag — he pulled me toward him and whispered in my ear, “I hope you kill them slowly.” Then he sent me on my way.

‘I checked into a hotel. I went to an apothecary — they still had such things in Budapest — and bought a cut-throat razor. I went to another shop and bought tape. I took the metro over to the Buda Hills where Lovas had his flat. I found it, no problem. I even rang the intercom and put on a funny voice and asked him if the woman of the house was in. “She died five years ago. Who is this? ” I said I was a member of the local Party committee for Senior Activities, and apologized for the mistake. Then I went over to Bodo’s flat in some ugly modern block in Pest. This time there was no intercom. But he answered the door himself: a hunched man around seventy in a dressing gown and wheezing while he smoked a cigarette. Of course he didn’t recognize me. “What do you want?” Is the woman of the house in? “She left years ago.” I said, “I’m from the Party committee on Pensioners and we want to see …” and I spun some lie about looking into the needs of the elderly. “Well, the woman you want isn’t here … but if you want to talk about the needs of the elderly … you can come in now and hear an earful.”

‘Now, I hadn’t expected to carry out my plan so quickly — but I did have everything I needed with me, so I let him usher me into his small, depressing flat. Crap furniture, crap wallpaper, a nasty little kitchen, brimming ashtrays, empty bottles of cheap booze.

‘”So who are you again?” he asked.

‘I told him my name.

‘”Kadar … like our Party chairman?” he asked me.

‘”No … Kadar like Miklos Kadar. You remember Miklos Kadar, don’t you?”

‘”I’m an old man. So many people have come and gone in my life.”

‘”Yes, but Miklos Kadar must hold a special place in your memory … as you executed him in front of his daughter.”

‘By this point we were seated in his little bed-sitting room. I opened the bag. I pulled out the shotgun. He gasped, but I put my finger to my lips and he didn’t say another word.

‘”Surely you must remember his little girl, Margit? You ordered one of your police stooges to keep her eyes open while you lynched him two meters from where she stood.”

‘At that point, he started to feign ignorance. “I don’t know what you’re talking about … I don’t remember such things.” I hit him on the side of the head with the gun and told him that if he didn’t tell me the truth I’d shoot him on the spot. That’s when he started to cry, to plead, to say how sorry he was, how he was “only following orders“… Yes, he actually used that expression.

‘I told him, “My mother and I were whisked out of the country afterward and even paid a pittance of a recompense by the government, because they were ashamed of what had happened. So please do not tell me you were only following orders. The cop who held me, he was only following orders — because you barked at him on several occasions when he let me shut my eyes. You, sir, wanted a seven-year-old girl to witness her father’s death. You wanted that scene burned on my memory forever. You succeeded. I’ve spent the ensuing decades trying to wipe that image away — but it simply will never leave me … a trauma which you inflicted on me out of sheer malice and cruelty—”

‘”You’re right, you’re right,” he cried. “I was so wrong. But they were terrible times and—”

‘That’s when I hit him again on the head and ordered him to sit down at his kitchen table. The fool complied. When I told him to lay his hands flat down on the table, he didn’t resist … even though he could have made a break for it when I had to put down the gun to start taping him. I used three rolls of tape — making certain he couldn’t move his arms and couldn’t get out of the chair.

‘When I had finished I said, “You dare to tell me, ‘They were terrible times.’ You were one of the perpetrators of those terrible times. You were an essential part of a repressive regime — against which men like my father had the courage to raise their voice. And how did you respond to his criticisms of your tyrannical methods? You strung him up in front of his daughter and forced her to watch him jerk and twist as he slowly strangled to death. How can you justify such a thing? How?”

‘He didn’t answer. He just sat there weeping. Much later, I was certain the reason why he didn’t put up a fight when I started taping him down was not just because of the gun within reach of me. It was also because part of him knew he merited this … that what he had done was so monstrous he deserved a terrible retribution.’

‘But what you did to him … that wasn’t monstrous?’

‘Of course it was. And after I wound the tape around his mouth and head — ensuring that he couldn’t scream or breathe — I did tell him, “In a few moments, you will wish I’d shot you and ended your life quickly.” Then I reached into my bag and pulled out the razor and opened it and severed his right thumb. It’s not easy, severing a finger. You have to work your way through bone and tendon and—’

‘Enough,’ I said.

‘I told you, if you don’t sit through my story you don’t get to hear the truth—’

‘The truth? You expect me to believe there’s any truth to any of this?’

‘Where are you right now, Harry? In some dream?’

‘I haven’t a fucking idea anymore …’

‘In dreams you might get your hand cut, but it doesn’t bleed. This is real. It’s simply a different version of real. But again, you’re interrupting my story. And until I finish the story—’

‘You’re sick, you know that?’

‘Sick because I cut off all of Bodo’s fingers? Without doubt, it was a sick thing to do. Even through the tape around his mouth I could hear his screams. But I was very systematic. Every finger on his right hand. A short pause. Every finger on his left hand. Then I started on his eyes. The police were wrong, by the way. I didn’t gouge them out. I simply sliced across them. You remember that Bunuel exercise in surrealism: Un chien andalou, where a woman gets her eye cut by a razor. It approximated that. And yes, you can think me mad and twisted for inflicting such horror … but surely you can grasp the madness that overtakes someone when they have been so wronged that—’

‘Don’t try to justify it. Don’t.’

‘I’m trying to justify nothing, Harry. I am simply relating to you what happened.’

‘Did it settle the score? Did doing that to Bodo in any way make you feel better about your father’s death?’

‘At the time, all I could think was, Do what you must do … Be systematic … Then get out of this dreadful country. So after blinding Bodo, I made a small incision in the side of his throat — to let him slowly bleed to death … though within moments I could hear gurgling and gasping behind his taped nose and mouth: a sign that he was starting to drown in his own blood. I had packed a spare set of clothes in the bag — so it was the same drill as with Dupre. I stripped everything off and had a shower. Only this time, I cleaned up all the evidence. I wanted everyone in France to know what I did. I also wanted everyone to know in Hungary … but only after I was out of the country. So I scrubbed down every surface I touched and bundled up my bloody clothes and waited until Bodo was no longer gasping and gagging.

‘Then I left and took the metro back across the city to Buda. I returned to the shop where I had purchased the duct tape and bought four more rolls. I walked over to Lovas’s apartment and rang his bell. He said, “Go away, I ant to see nobody.”

‘I said, “But I am the woman from the Party’s senior services. I have come with a special present for you. You must let me deliver it.”

‘Once I had talked myself inside his apartment and revealed who I was and brought out the gun, he began to scream. I told him to shut up, but he kept screaming. That’s when I slammed him on the head with the gun. It knocked him out cold. I taped him down, I gagged him as I had done with Bodo. But just as I started working on him, there was a banging at the door. It was some neighbor who’d evidently heard his screaming, as she kept shouting, “Mr Lovas, are you all right? Is someone there with you? ” If I had been sensible, I would have cut his throat right there and hightailed it out of the kitchen window — his apartment was on the ground floor. But I wasn’t sensible. I was deranged. So deranged that I convinced myself I had to dismember all of his fingers and blind him as well. The pain caused Lovas to wake up when I was cutting off his right pinky, and I’d been sloppy when it came to taping his mouth, as I left a small gap. So he started to scream again. The neighbor heard this and told him she was going to call the police. But I still didn’t make a run for it. I just continued my grim work—’

‘You wanted to get caught—’

‘I don’t know what I wanted at the time. When you’re deranged you don’t think logically. You just tell yourself, Get the next finger off …’

‘Jesus …’

She smiled and lit up a cigarette.

‘It gets worse. The police arrived. They pounded on the door, demanding to be let in. I worked super-fast, making certain all his fingers were severed. By this time, their pounding was replaced with the boom-boom sound of a battering ram they were using against the door. As it began to give, I grabbed Lovas by the hair. As soon as the door burst open and the cops fell in, I cut his jugular. Then, as they watched in complete horror, I drew the razor across my own throat.’

‘And then?’

‘And then … I escaped arrest, detention, trial and probable execution by a regime I loathed.’

‘By dying?’

‘Yes. I died.’

Silence. She continued to puff on her cigarette.

‘And then?’ I asked.

‘Death is death.’

‘Which means?’

‘I no longer existed in a temporal form.’

‘But what happened after you died?’

Another smile. Another deep lungful of smoke.

‘That I cannot say.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because … I can’t.’

‘The cops showed me your death certificate. And you yourself have confirmed that you slit your throat and you died. So why … why … are you here?’

‘Because I am.’

‘But that doesn’t make sense. How can I believe you when I know what you’re telling me is impossible?’

‘Since when has death ever made sense, Harry?’

‘But you’ve been there. You know.’

Another smile.

‘True — and I’m saying nothing.’

‘You have to tell me—’

‘No, I don’t. And no … I won’t. Any more than I have to explain my work on your behalf.’

‘Your work on my behalf. Now I know you are insane.’

‘Think what you like, my sweet. But consider this: every person who has recently done harm to you has, in turn, been punished.’

‘You ran over Brasseur outside the hotel?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘How else do you run a man down? I got into a car that I borrowed on the street. A Mercedes C-Class — not the best Mercedes, but still a car with considerable kick. I waited for him to emerge from Le Select. When he stepped off the pavement, I hit the accelerator and ran right into him.’

‘He said he couldn’t see the driver, but he thought it was a woman.’

Another smile.

‘And you cornered Omar when he was on the toilet?’ I asked.

‘You were right about him. His shit truly stank. And I’ll let you in on a small revolting secret: when he wiped himself he only used a minimal amount of paper, so the shit was everywhere on his hands. A disgusting bastard. And I’d seen how he had treated you, how he left that communal toilet in such a grim state—’

‘You saw ? How?’

She stubbed out a cigarette and lit another.

‘Do you know what I like best about being dead? You can smoke without guilt.’

‘But even in death you still age, just like the rest of us.’

‘Yes, that is rather ironic, don’t you think? But that’s how it works … for me, at least.’

‘And the others?’

A shrug.

‘So you didn’t go to heaven after you—?’

‘Killed myself ? Hardly.’

‘To hell then?’

‘I went … nowhere. And then, somehow, I was back here. I was ten years older, but the apartment was here …’

‘Who paid the bills?’

‘Before I left for Hungary, I saw my lawyer and told him to set up a trust with the money I received as compensation from Dupre. I left my estate to no one. And I made certain in my will that no one could sell the apartment from under me. You see, I knew what I was going to do in Budapest … and I also knew that I would have to disappear for a very long time afterward …’

‘So you weren’t planning to kill yourself ?’

‘Not until the police burst in. It was a completely impulsive decision. But, like I said, I was crazy then.’

‘And you’re not crazy now? Beating men to death with baseball bats—’

‘He kicked the crap out of his wife, and he also threatened to kill you.’

‘That was never established.’

‘I heard it.’

‘When?’

‘In his bar. When he didn’t think I was there.’

‘And Robson?’

‘I asked you what you thought was the worst thing that could befall him. You said—’

‘I didn’t think you’d actually download kiddy porn on to his computer.’

‘It’s what you wanted, Harry. That man systematically destroyed your life. His punishment struck me as … apt. His life is now completely shattered. And before the week is out, he’ll take his own life in jail.’

‘Are you going to force him to do that?’

Another laugh.

‘I am not a spirit who invades the souls of others and forces them to do things.’

‘No — you’re just a succubus.’

‘A succubus has sex with men while they are asleep. You’re very much awake, Harry.’

‘So all this then is … what? When I came here yesterday, the apartment was covered in dust, the concierge acted as if I was a lunatic, telling me the place hadn’t been inhabited — let alone cleaned — for years.’

‘You’re not a lunatic. But when you come to visit me every three days, you enter this.’

‘But what is this? And what about everybody else in the building? Do they go into the same sort of trance which the concierge seemed to be in?’

‘Think whatever you like.’

‘I still don’t get it. Why just the three hours? Why just every few days?’

‘Because that’s all I can do … all I can take. I want this … our little liaison. But only on my terms. That’s why I refused to see you more than our few hours twice a week.’

‘Because that’s all you were allowed?’

‘No one controls me. No one.’

‘But you still loiter with intent every Sunday on the balcony of some dilettante American’s salon, picking up idiots like myself ?’

‘You were only the second man I ever picked up there.’

‘Who was the first?’

‘A German named Horst. I met him there in June of ‘91. I had just … re-emerged, so to speak. And I was revisiting places I had been in the past. So, when I found myself back in Paris — eleven years after my death — I decided to try my luck and see what might come of a sojourn on Lorraine’s balcony. I must have lurked there for weeks … until Horst saw me. Like you, he was a man in his forties, recently divorced, on his own in Paris, sad, lonely. We chatted. He came to this apartment at the agreed five p.m. time. We had sex. We drank Scotch. We smoked a few cigarettes. He talked about how his wife had fallen in love with another man, his stalled career as a painter, the lycee where he taught art and how it all bored him, and so forth and so on. All our stories are simultaneously unique and desperately similar, aren’t they? At eight o’clock, I told him he had to leave — but that he’d be welcomed back three days later. He said he’d show up. He never did. After that, I occasionally “returned” to Lorraine’s balcony, hoping someone might see me. No one did for years. Until you showed up, Harry. You saw me … because you wanted to see me.’

‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘You must stop talking about “sense” or the apparent illogicality of our time together. There is no logic to this — except that we are here together because, as I said before, you wanted to see me.’

‘That’s bullshit.’

‘Then why did you keep coming here, dutifully, week after week? Simply for the sex?’

‘That was a big part of it.’

‘You’re right. It was. But there was more to it than that. You needed to see me … in every sense of the word. And I needed to put things right for you.’

‘I cannot accept—’

‘Accept, accept. Faith may be the antithesis of proof … but you have proof. You. Me. Here. Now.’

‘You don’t exist.’

‘I do exist … as much as you exist. In this room. This moment. This time. This bit of nothingness that is still everything because it’s the instant we share now. You can’t escape that, Harry. Nor should you. It’s the closest you’ve ever come to love in your life.’

‘You have no idea about—’

‘Love? How dare you? I went out of my mind for love. I killed — butchered — for love. I have far too many ideas about love … and I also know it’s like everything else in life: it can drive you to the worst extremes, the absolute edge. Yet, in the great scheme of things, it all comes down to a moment here, a moment there … and a flicker of connection with someone else. That’s happiness, Harry. Nothing more.’

‘And what about love for your child?’

Silence. Then she said, ‘That’s everything. And you feel you have to kill the person who takes everything away from you.’

‘Did the revenge help balm the wounds?’

‘You mean, do I still relive the sadness and horror of what happened … and of what I did? Of course. I still can’t get away from it. It will be with me forever. But I have sought redemption … through you.’

‘That’s insane.’

‘Putting things right for another person isn’t insane.’

‘It is when you resort to violent means to do it.’

‘But look how everything is gradually working out for you. Robson is in jail. So too is Sezer and his nasty henchman … and you know they were both gunning for you. Omar tried to blackmail you. He’s been eliminated. Yanna’s husband didn’t deserve a further day of life on this earth. So I cannot really see how you can complain. Because, in time, things will come even more right for you.’

I stood up.

‘Do you really think I’m going to buy into this madness?’

‘You have already done so, Harry. You’ve been complicit in this from the start.’

‘You mean, because I visualized you — the invisible woman — whereas others never did?’

‘But why did you see me? Because you needed to. Just as you needed me to settle all the scores you so wanted resolved.’

‘So you follow me everywhere, is that it?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘But why me?’

‘What an absurd question. We are involved.’

‘You call this an involvement? For you it was an afternoon fuck twice a week, nothing more.’

‘And for you, it was … ?’

‘The one thing I had in my life that I looked forward to.’

‘Don’t you think I also looked forward to it? We didn’t just fuck in this room, Harry — and you know it. We talked. We told each other our stories. We found some comfort in that. I certainly grew to like it … and to need it. I mightn’t have always shown it. I might have discouraged you from getting closer … but you still did. You needed me — this — as much as I did you.’

‘Well, if you think I’m going to keep coming back here, slipping into this little twilight zone you’ve set up here—’

‘You can’t leave now,’ she said, her voice quiet, flat.

‘Yes, I can … and I will. Because this is now dead. As dead as you.’

‘No, it’s not. Now that you know about me … now that you come into this place with me twice a week … now that I am the person who watches your back … this is not ending.’

‘Fuck you,’ I said, walking toward the door.

‘A stupid response, Harry. But, I suppose, understandable. You will need time to accept—’

‘I am accepting nothing. Got that? Nothing. You’re never seeing me again.’

‘Yes, I am. And you’ll want to see me … or, at least, call out to me at some moment when you’re in a situation from which you can’t extricate yourself.’

‘Don’t count on that. Stay away from me.’

‘No, Harry … the real question here is: Can you stay away from me?’

‘That won’t be hard to do,’ I said and walked fast toward the door.

‘See you in three days,’ she said as the door closed behind me.

I raced downstairs. Once I had crossed the courtyard I stopped for a moment outside the concierge’s lodge. He was still sitting there, comatose to the world. I reached the main door. I hit the button to release the lock. This time it opened with a telltale click. I stepped out into the street. Automotive sounds filled my ears as cars drove by. I looked both ways. There were pedestrians on the rue Linne. The old guy in the corner shop was sitting behind his small counter, looking bored. Life was, per usual, going on around me. I returned to the front door of Margit’s apartment. Less than a minute had evaporated since I had crossed back into the quotidian world. I punched in the code. I stepped back inside the courtyard. I turned toward the concierge’s lodge. He was no longer in an inanimate state. On the contrary, as soon as he saw me he was on his feet, grabbing a large two-by-four by his desk, then stepping just outside the lodge and brandishing this club.

‘You again? I told you to stay away. You go. Now.’

I did as requested, hightailing it back out into the street. I walked quickly toward the Jussieu metro station. Halfway there I got a bad case of the shakes. Is she with me right now? Does she shadow my every move?

I ducked into a cafe. I bought a double whisky. Even when added to all the other Scotch that Margit had poured into me, it still did little to dampen down my anxiety, my growing belief that I had lost all reason. I put my fingers to my nose, the same fingers that Margit had pushed into herself. Her smell was still there. I touched the bandage on my hand. She’s dead … and she bandaged that hand. I ordered another whisky. Think, think. No, don’t think. Just run. Go back to the hotel. Get your bag. Hop a cab to the Gard du Nord. Buy a ticket on the last train out tonight to London. But what about the novel? Fuck the novel. Run.

And then what? Without the novel I have nothing to show for my time here … nothing to do when I get to England. At least if I have the disk I can pick up the narrative again. I can give the day some shape by punching out my quota of words. I can tell myself, You are trying to accomplish something. So go back to the office and get the disk. There’s now nothing to fear. The place has been raided. Sezer and Mr Tough Guy are locked up in some commissariat de police, and the cops are no longer interested in the place. Get the disk. You’ll be in and out of there in less than a minute. Then make a beeline for the Gare du Nord and slam the door on this entire deranged episode …

By the time I had left the cafe I had decided that a better strategy would be to go back to the office in the middle of the night … preferably right before dawn. If anyone was lying in wait for me — doubtful, but I was still paranoid — they would most likely give up an all-night stakeout by six. More importantly, I could sleep until five thirty — sleep now being a major need.

I forced myself out of the cafe and took the metro to the Gare du Nord where I booked a ticket on the 07h35 Eurostar to London the next morning. I paid cash. As I counted out the notes, I again wondered if she was watching me buy the ticket. I jumped Line 4 back to Chateau d’Eau and walked into one of the many long-distance phone shops that lined the boulevard de Sebastopol. The place I entered looked like a fly-by-night operation — and was crowded with men trying to get through to relatives in Yaounde and Dakar and Benin and other West African cities. I bought a phone card and took my place at a crude plywood booth and made a call I was dreading, but couldn’t avoid. I checked my watch: 8.05 p.m. in Paris … 2.05 p.m. in Ohio. Susan answered on the second ring.

‘Hi there,’ I said.

‘Harry?’ she asked quietly.

‘That’s right. How are you doing?’

‘How am I doing? Terribly, that’s how. But you must know that already, otherwise why would you be calling after all this time.’

The angry tone was the one she always used with me during the final years of our marriage — when I never seemed to be able to do anything right, and when she seemed to have so completely fallen out of love with me.

‘The only reason I haven’t called is because you barred me from—’

‘I know, I know. Rub it in, why don’t you. Especially in light of—’

‘Susan, I just called to see how you were. That’s all.’

A pause. I could hear her stifling a sob.

‘He hanged himself this morning.’

Oh fuck.

‘Robson killed himself ?’ I said.

‘His name was Gardner — and yes, he hanged himself with a bedsheet in his cell early this morning. I just found out. Some asshole reporter from Fox News who called me and asked me for a comment. Can you imagine that?’

I said nothing. She continued, ‘Over the past week, I have lost everything. Everything. My job, my career. Now that it’s been revealed I was fucking the Dean of the Faculty, no one’s going to be hiring me in a hurry. Then there’s the little discovery that Gardner had a thing for naked seven-year-old girls and boys. I just can’t tell you how horrible it was to …’

Another stifled sob.

‘Is there anything I can do?’ I asked.

‘Stop trying to sound magnanimous … when I know you must be gloating now that your nemesis …’

She broke off, crying. I said, ‘Susan, I want to talk to Megan.’

‘Megan’s very upset right now. The news about Gardner’s crime … it was everywhere. All the kids at her school … well, you know how horrible children can be.’

‘Will you tell her I want to speak to her?’

‘All right.’

‘Please ask her to send me an email if she wants me to phone her back. And if you need money or anything …’

‘Are you still in Paris?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Working?’

‘Not at the moment.’

‘Then how can you have money?’

‘I did have a job … nothing much … but I’ve saved a bit. So if things get tight …’

‘I can’t deal with this … you … right now.’

Then, ‘I will tell Megan you called.’

The line went dead.

You’ve just overheard all that, haven’t you? You must be very proud of your handiwork. Another dead man to add to the tally of my adversaries you’ve rubbed out. And you expect me to be pleased … when all I can really feel is sheer overriding guilt.

Stop, stop. You need sleep. Deep restorative sleep. Take pills. Take whisky. Take whatever you can. Just get back to the hotel and hide under the blankets until day breaks and you can flee everything.

So I returned to my grim room in the Le Normandie. I repacked my bag. I set the alarm on my portable radio for five fifteen a.m. I took pills, I climbed into the damp, saggy bed. I clutched the pillow against me. I kept hearing Margit say, ‘You can’t leave now.’

You know, don’t you? I’m abandoning you come morning and there’s nothing you can do to stop me getting on that train. Spook me all you want. Follow me spectrally to London. I’m still leaving. This is over.

The pills did their stuff. I conked out. When the radio snapped on seven hours later, I jumped up, certain that she was in the room with me. Did that mean she inhabited my unconscious as I slept? She watched me sleep, didn’t she? Just as she was standing nearby as I sat in that plywood cubicle, overhearing my conversation with Susan. And now she was plotting to get Susan and …

It’s morning. You’ve slept. The train leaves in just over two hours. Go get the disk. Go to the station. Vanish. And this will vanish with you. ‘Faith is the antithesis of proof. ‘ She told you that as a way of playing with your head. The cut on your hand? You cut your hand, acting out this delusional fantasy. The concierge is right: you’ve lost it. Get the disk. Get the train. Find a sympathetic doctor. Get some pharmaceuticals to end this phantasmagoria in which you’ve been living. Get back to Planet Earth.

I stood in the tiny shower and turned my face up toward the enervated spray of water. I dressed quickly and was out the front door by five forty. The streets were empty, though a few stallholders in the market on the faubourg Saint-Denis were taking deliveries from assorted vans. I turned up the rue des Petites Ecuries, rolling my suitcase behind me, stealing a quick glance at the shuttered Internet cafe. Au revoir, Mr Beard … and fuck you too. I reached my former place of work. I stopped at the top of the alleyway and peered down. Light was just breaking in the sky, casting a gray-blue tint on its cracked cobbles. No one could be seen lurking in the shadows. I turned back to the street. Empty, deserted, even devoid of cars. I checked onlooking windows. All shuttered or curtained. No one peering out at me. The coast was clear.

OK, here we go. Start counting and promise yourself by the time you reach sixty you’ll have come and gone.

One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, four-one …

I reached the front door and looked up and saw that the video camera had been prized off its bracket. Probably taken by the cops as evidence.

I had my key at the ready. I opened the door.

… nine-one-thousand, ten-one-thousand, eleven-one-thousand …

Inside, the corridor was empty, some police tape hanging limply in front of the steel door at the far end; a door now open. But I didn’t stop to inspect what was in this once-forbidden zone. I left my bag by the front door and dashed up the stairs, second key at the ready. I unlocked the door.

… seventeen-one-thousand, eighteen-one-thousand, nineteen-one-thousand, twenty-one-thousand …

My desk had been turned upside down, the emergency door pried open … the escape route that I never had to use. The cops had also pulled up much of the linoleum, but they hadn’t seen the small crevice above the emergency exit where I had secreted the disk.

… twenty-three-one-thousand, twenty-four-one-thousand, twenty-five-one-thousand …

I crossed the room and reached up into the crevice. My fingers touched the disk, but they now couldn’t gain purchase around it. Shit. Shit. Shit. I tried to pry a finger to one side of the disk in an attempt to push it forward, then started digging at it with my key.

But just as I started to edge it forward, something happened.

There was a large bang behind me as the office door slammed. And this was immediately followed by the sound of the lock being turned twice.

I dashed across the room and started yanking on the door handle. It wouldn’t give. I inserted my key and attempted to turn the lock. It wouldn’t budge. When I tried to pull the key out and start again, it remained frozen within the lock. I yanked and yanked on the key, jiggling it madly from side to side. It wouldn’t give. I kicked the door, two, three, four times. It wouldn’t give … it wouldn’t fucking give …

Then I heard another sound. A loud whoosh — followed by an explosion of hot air from the one ventilator shaft in the room. But this wasn’t just an overcharged blast from the heating system — as the air which blew out quickly turned into a gray toxic cloud. Within seconds, the room was fogged in, a sulfuric stench enveloping me, singeing my eyes, my lips, my nose, my lungs. I clawed my way through the cloud to the emergency exit. It was already starting to fill up with smoke, but after about ten steps I hit a pocket of fresher air. The corridor was so narrow I kept hitting my elbows off its sides as I ran toward its end.

But when I reached it, I didn’t run into a door that would lead me to some sort of freedom. I just hit a wall. A flat brick wall, against which I crashed. I fell down, stunned. The smoke billowed into the tunnel. All fresh air vanished. I began to choke, to gag, to spew blood through my nose. The cloud thickened. My lungs now felt scorched. I pitched over on to the dirt floor. I continued to gag, to vomit. And I screamed, ‘Margit! … Margit! … Margit!’

Nothing happened … except that breathing became impossible.

‘Margit! … Margit! … Margit!’

My voice was stifled now, my vision fading. And somewhere within all the vaporous confusion, there was one pervading thought: So this is what death is … a slow choke to black.

‘Margit! … Margit! … Mar …’

My voice was fading. I coughed, I sputtered, I heaved. I should have panicked because death was near. Instead, I began to surrender to asphyxiation. The panic was replaced by a weird calmness: a sense that dying — even in such appalling circumstances — was the most natural of progressions. You’re here. You’re not. And everything beyond this smoke-filled room simply continues on.

But the moment I accepted that death was nothing strange, the strangest thing happened.

The door burst open and a fireman dashed in. He was wearing a gas mask and carrying a spare in his hand. He grabbed me and slung the mask over my face. As the rush of oxygen hit, he said two words, ‘Lucky man.’