Mark Burnell - The Third Woman

Stephanie entered Passage du Caire, an arcade of cramped passages with filthy glass overhead, and came to the place where the Fursts’ family business had once been. Part of the sign still hung above the door, the red plastic letters faded to dirty pink. The window was crammed with mannequins; beige females with no heads or arms. A piece of paper pasted to the glass offered fifty percent discounts for bulk orders.

Four doors down was La Béatrice, the kosher café where Cyril Bradfield had introduced Stephanie to Jacob Furst. Seven tables with magnolia Formica tops, a selection of snacks laid out behind a glass counter, fluorescent tubes taped to sagging ceiling panels, one of them hanging loose. On the wall beside the espresso machine was a large wooden framed photograph of George Clooney next to a smaller frame containing a certificate bearing the words ‘Shin Beth de Paris’.

There were half a dozen people in the place. Mostly from the arcade, she guessed; none of them were wet. Stephanie recognized Béatrice, a haughty-looking woman with dyed black hair. She ordered a cappuccino and took it to a vacant table by the small circular staircase leading to the upper floor. Béatrice fiddled with the portable radio on the counter until Liane Foly was singing ‘Doucement’. In the café’s wet warmth, Stephanie caught a whiff of cinnamon.

One o’clock came and went. So did Béatrice’s customers. Stephanie noticed a man who seemed vaguely familiar; slim, tall, well dressed, in his fifties with the same dark blonde hair she’d had as Krista Jaspersen. He was sitting at a table near the staircase. She couldn’t pin a name to the face but wondered whether she might have seen him on TV.

At one-fifteen her mobile rang.

‘Petra?’

‘Jacob?’

‘Where are you?’

The high-pitched voice sounded more tremulous than usual.

‘I’m where you should be. Unless my memory’s going.’

He didn’t reply straight away and she regretted her sarcasm.

‘I apologize, Petra.’

‘Where are you ? I don’t have long, Jacob.’

‘Fifteen minutes, okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘You’ll stay?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good. Two minutes, then …’

He finished the call and Stephanie sat there for a moment trying to remember something she’d forgotten. Something she’d intended to ask him. Something that had come back to her on the train.

The phone. The number. How had Furst got Marianne’s number? And now that she thought about that, there was something else. Fifteen minutes? Or two?

She found she was reaching into her coat pocket for loose change; as usual, Petra was ahead of Stephanie, her instinct taking over. There were no coins left. The last of them had gone to the taxi driver. She put a ten-euro note beneath the saucer and stood up.

Out in the passage she looked both ways. Nothing. She decided to wait for his call somewhere nearby. When he arrived and discovered that she’d left, he’d phone again. She was certain of it.

She turned back towards the rue Saint Denis entrance.

And was airborne.

The shockwave was the sound somehow. A flash. Light, heat, no air in her lungs. She was aloft in a hurricane of debris. Then gravity reclaimed her and she was smeared across … what, exactly ?

Darkness followed. Unconsciousness? Or just darkness?

The screams began. Cutting through the hum in her head. When she opened her eyes she couldn’t see. A cloud of dust enveloped her, as impenetrable as highland mist. She didn’t know if she was injured because she was numb. But she was aware of wetness down her back. And dirt in her mouth. There was a smell too; something cloying. Burning plastic, perhaps?

Her foot was trapped, wedged between two solid shapes.

She closed her eyes. Time to sleep.

No .

Petra twisted her body so that she could see her right foot. A grey filing cabinet was on top of it, two of its three drawers blown out. Beneath it was half a beige mannequin. She used her left foot against the filing cabinet, creating a gap for the right, then rolled off her mattress of fractured dummies.

Water droplets splashed on her face. A burst pipe. Or rain. She looked up but saw only smoke and dust.

The right ankle was tender. She hauled herself to her feet. Nausea rose up inside her. One step, then another. For now, that was enough. Adrenaline, her most faithful servant, would see her through.

In the remains of the passage fires sprouted in the gloom, deep orange and gold. A severed cable spat white hot sparks over a soggy roll of material with a floral print. Except it wasn’t a roll. It was a body in a dress. Petra made out an arm, filthy black, the hand crushed to pulp.

The passage had a lawn of broken glass. Not just from store windows but from the canopy overhead; metres and metres of it reduced to splinters.

La Béatrice was burning rubble. How many people had been inside? Half a dozen? Maybe. The upper floor had collapsed into the café. She didn’t know whether there had been anyone up there. Scorched body parts hung from the fractured iron staircase. At the foot of the stairs, Béatrice’s head and upper torso were on fire. Petra couldn’t see the rest of the corpse but could smell her burning hair. Closer to the entrance, a single boot and shin protruded from beneath a concrete slab. Less than a metre away, blood was oozing through cracked brick.

There was music. Weak, muffled, rising up from beneath the debris; Béatrice’s portable radio, still working, no matter how improbably. Petra looked to her right. Rue Saint Denis had gone, concealed by the cloak of smoke.

She began to cough, lining her nostrils and mouth with dust. Stunned, all her training suspended, she staggered away, each step as uncertain as the one before. A few metres on, a pretty blonde woman in a lilac cardigan and brown tweed skirt lay on the ground, twitching, flayed by glass.

Under the screams she heard distant shouts; people making their way towards the carnage. Boots scrambled over loose brick, muttered curses followed falls.

To her left, a large fire was taking hold, glass cracking in the heat. She came to a fork in the passage. Over the ringing in her head an orchestra of alarms grew louder. She veered right, then stopped.

‘… to be careful, okay?’

A snatch of conversation coming her way. Then another voice: ‘Check everywhere.’

‘… watch overhead for collapsing …’

Shapes were forming in the murk.

‘… somewhere in here … keep looking …’

‘… extremely dangerous … and armed …’

Two figures, certainly, perhaps three.

‘… take any chances …’

Petra coughed again, spitting out brown saliva.

The first figure emerged from the dust, a light grey raincoat billowing around him. The next was in uniform. An armed police officer with a full moustache. Other silhouettes took shape behind them.

The first man saw her, halted abruptly, then pointed directly at her. ‘ Shit! It’s her! There she is!’

There who is?

Who was he looking at? Why was he pointing at her?

A third figure was forming, another armed officer in uniform, then a fourth man in a tan leather coat.

‘Shoot her.’

A mistake, clearly. Except Petra knew that it wasn’t.

The first armed officer looked unsure.

‘It’s her,’ barked the man in the grey raincoat. ‘I tell you, it’s her!’

‘I don’t see the …’

‘She’s armed ! Now shoot her!’

The man in the leather coat was already raising his right hand. The second officer was pushing past the first. And Petra was moving, taking the passage directly ahead, already aware of the fact that it was too straight. In a matter of seconds, before she could melt into the smoke, they would have a clear view of her back.