Douglas Kennedy - Woman in the Fifth

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.’