Douglas Kennedy - Woman in the Fifth

That night, nothing happened again — except that I managed to give the office two coats of paint. I did my ‘job’ as well — checking the monitor every few minutes to see if there was anyone lurking in the hallway. There wasn’t. Before I knew it, my watch was reading 5.45 a.m. — and though it was clear that the second coat wouldn’t sufficiently cover the chalky grey concrete walls, at least I knew that another night had passed.

I packed away all the gear. I washed the brushes in the sink. I left at 6 a.m. exactly. I took several deep gulps of Paris air as I walked down the still-dark street toward the boulangerie . My usual two pains . One eaten on the way home, the second with hot chocolate after a shower. Then — with the aid of Zopiclone — seven hours of void until the alarm woke me at two and a new day started.

That night, I finished painting the walls. I sanded down the woodwork. I left at six. The next night, I finished glossing all the woodwork. Again, there was no activity whatsoever on the monitor. At six that morning, I moved all the empty cans and paint gear out of the office and dumped the lot in the rubbish bins at the end of the alley. When I awoke that afternoon, I went straight over to the cafe to collect my wages. For the third day running, Mr Beard with the Prayer Bruise was behind the counter.

‘Still no Kamal?’ I asked.

‘He goes away.’

‘He didn’t say anything to me about that.’

‘Family problems.’

‘Is there a number I could call him on?’ I asked.

‘Why you want to call him?’

‘I liked him. We got on well. And if he’s got some personal problems …’

‘There is no number for him.’

The tone of voice was definitive. It also didn’t encourage further questioning. So I picked up my pay envelope and said nothing, except, ‘I want to buy a few more things for the office. Might you be able to get a message from me to the boss?’

‘You tell me what you need.’

‘A small refrigerator and an electric kettle. It’s very hard to work in that room all night without coffee or hot water. I’d also like a rug. The concrete floor still gives off a bit of damp—’

‘I tell him,’ he said, cutting me off. Then he picked up a rag and started swabbing down the bar. Our conversation was over.

When I arrived at work that night, a fridge was awaiting me in a corner of the room. Though somewhat battered — with hints of rust on its hinges — it was still working. So too was the electric kettle positioned on top of it. It looked new. When I filled it with water, it boiled its contents in less than a minute. The only problem was, I didn’t have any coffee or tea on hand. But, at least, I now knew that the man in charge was amenable to certain requests — even though there was still no rug.

But there was a change in my usual routine: a visitor in the alleyway. He arrived at 1.48 a.m. precisely. The phone rang on my desk, jolting me. I looked away from my Simenon novel and turned immediately to the monitor and saw a man of indiscriminate age (the grainy image made it hard to discern his features) standing outside. I was instantly nervous. I picked up the phone and said, ‘ Oui? ‘

His voice was raspy, and French was not his first language. But he still said, ‘ Je voudrais voir Monsieur Monde .’

I hit the 1-1 entrance code. Downstairs I heard the telltale click of the door opening, then the door being closed with a decisive thud. I pressed 2-2 to alert my ‘neighbors’ that they had a legitimate visitor. There were footsteps on the downstairs corridor. There was a knock on another door. The door opened and closed. Then there was silence.

I didn’t see or hear him exit, even though I kept scanning the monitor. There were no other visitors. There were no sounds from down below. My shift ended. I went home.

A few days later, the carpet finally arrived at work — and I began to bring my laptop in every night, forcing myself back into the novel. As there was no other work to do but this work — my quota of words per night — I kept at it. Days would pass when no one would ring the bell, demanding admittance. Then there would be a night when four separate callers came to the door, all men of indeterminate age, all asking to see Monsieur Monde. I’d hit the button, the door would open and close, there would be footsteps, another door opening and closing, end of story.

A month passed. February gave way to March. There was an ever-early lightening of the evening sky; the days still cold, but brighter. Had I been in a normal state of mind, the thought would have struck me: You have been working for over five weeks now without a day off. But I was still operating on some sort of weird autopilot: work, sleep, pick up cash, movies, work. If I took a day off, I might fall out of routine … and if I fell out of routine, I might start to reflect about things. And if I started to reflect about things …

So I stuck to the routine. Day in, day out, nothing changed.

Until something unsettling happened. I was nursing a post- cinematheque beer in the little bar on the rue de Paradis. I picked up a copy of Le Parisien that had been left on a table and started flicking through its contents. There, on the bottom right-hand corner of page 5, under the headline, Body of Missing Man Found in Saint-Ouen , was a photograph of someone named Kamal Fatel. Though the photo was grainy, there was no doubt that it was the same Kamal who ran the Internet cafe and found me my current job. The story was a short one:

The body of Kamal Fatel, 35, a resident of rue Carnot in Saint-Ouen, was found last night in an unused dumpster near the Peripherique. According to the police at the scene, the body, though badly decomposed, had been identified through dental records of the deceased. The Saint-Ouen medical examiner issued a statement saying that, due to the state of the cadaver, the exact time and cause of death had yet to be ascertained. According to Inspector Philippe Faure of the commissariat de police in Saint-Ouen, Fatel’s wife, Kala, had thought her husband was traveling in Turkey to visit relatives there. Fatel, born in Turkey in 1972, had been resident in France since 1977 and had run an Internet cafe on the rue des Petites Ecuries …

I downed the dregs of the beer in one go. I grabbed the paper. I walked with considerable speed toward the rue des Petites Ecuries. Mr Beard was behind the counter of the cafe. I dropped the paper in front of him and asked, ‘Did you see this?’

His face registered nothing.

‘Yes, I saw it,’ he said.

‘Aren’t you shocked?’

‘This morning, when I first saw the story, yes, I was a little shocked.’

‘A little shocked? The guy is dead.’

‘Like his wife, I had thought he had gone back to Turkey. But …’

‘Who was behind it?’

‘Why should I know such a thing? I worked with Kamal. He was not my friend.’

‘Was he in some sort of trouble with somebody?’

‘Once again, you ask questions which I cannot answer. His life was not known to me.’

I could tell he was lying — because his eyes kept darting away from mine whenever I tried to eyeball him. Or if he wasn’t lying, he was working very hard at not appearing nervous — and failing badly.

‘Will there be a funeral?’

‘In Turkey.’

‘How do you know that?’ I challenged.

He tensed, realizing he’d just let himself be caught out.

‘Just a guess,’ he said, then stood up and said, ‘I am closing now.’

‘Do I have time to check my email?’

‘No.’

‘Just give me five minutes, no more.’

‘Be fast.’

I sat down at one of the computer terminals, clicked on Internet Explorer and then typed in AOL. Within a minute, my mailbox covered a corner of the screen: with one actual email … from, of all people, my former colleague, Doug Stanley. It read: