Douglas Kennedy - Woman in the Fifth

‘We know it was you—’

‘Why would I—’

‘Because you killed Omar and Monsieur Attani, that is why, and then you put the weapons—’

‘My fingerprints weren’t on the weapons. Mahmoud’s were—’

‘Ah, so the cops did tell you they arrested Mr Sezer and Mahmoud.’

‘If I allegedly “planted” the weapons, then why were Mahmoud’s fingerprints on them?’

‘You could have left them somewhere obvious in Mr Sezer’s office. Mahmoud might have picked them up to hide them—’

‘Mahmoud would have seen the blood on them and thrown them out. But maybe Mahmoud isn’t the cleverest guy to have walked the face of the earth. Maybe, having killed Omar and Attani on the orders of Sezer, he simply threw the weapons into some back room, some attic, not thinking that the cops would—’

‘The weapons were found below the sink in Mahmoud’s room. They were placed there, the police were called—’

‘And I was in police custody at the time—’

‘You could still have put them there. Did you also tell them about where you worked?’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘Liar. They raided the building last night, pulled everything apart. Fortunately, after the arrests of Monsieur Sezer and Mahmoud, we had a little time to clear out—’

‘Were you making snuff movies and bombs there?’

‘Stop asking questions. You are in enough trouble right now—’

‘Trouble for what? I kept my mouth shut. I showed up every night at midnight. I never asked questions. I never interfered—’

‘But you saw—’

‘I saw nothing .’

‘Liar.’

‘Think what you like. I didn’t send the cops to you, I played by the rules you set.’

Pause. He stared at me for a very long time. Then: ‘You go back to work tonight.’

‘But what is there to guard?’

‘That is not your business.’

‘Surely the cops are treating downstairs as a crime scene. Surely they’ll have men guarding the place.’

‘The cops are no longer there. They have finished all their “tests”. They are gone.’

‘Did you pay them off or something?’

‘They are gone. And you must return to your work tonight.’

I knew that if I now said, ‘No damn way,’ I wouldn’t be allowed off the premises. I also knew that if I did show up for work tonight, I might not ever walk out of there alive. The fever was now making me shiver. I clutched myself tightly.

‘You sick?’ he asked.

‘Didn’t get much sleep in the cell …’

‘Go home, get some rest, be at work on time tonight.’

Then he opened the door and motioned for me to leave.

On the way back to my room, I thought, They are going to kill me. They just want to do it in an enclosed environment where they can make me disappear with minimal detection. There was only one thing to do: flee.

But before I did that, I had to go see Margit at the agreed hour of five. I had to convince myself I hadn’t gone completely crazy. I had to know the truth.

I also needed to lie down for a couple of hours, before this fever overwhelmed me. I would take a nap, then pack a bag, then arrive at the rue Linne, then run to the Gare du Nord and get the last Eurostar out to London. God knows what I would do there once I arrived, but at least it would be away from all this. That’s all that mattered to me now: disappearing from view.

But when I reached my room, I found the door half-open, the lock dangling from its hinges, everything trashed. Shelves had been ripped from the walls, drawers pulled out, their contents dumped. All my clothes had been rifled through, many of them torn. The bed had been overturned, the sheets and duvet ripped apart, the mattress split down the middle. I stood in the doorway, stunned. Then I was immediately on my knees by the sink. Everything in the cabinet had been pulled out, but whoever rampaged through my room didn’t notice the loose linoleum covering the floor. Pulling it up, I reached into the same hole that Adnan once used as a safe and found the money I had been storing was still there. I pulled out the plastic Jiffy bags in which I had placed twenty euros a day from my wages. I quickly counted the three separate wads. Twenty-eight hundred euros — the total savings from all my nights of work.

My relief was enormous. But there was a possible stumbling block from my newly hatched escape plan: the backup disk for my novel. I kept it hidden in a paperback copy of Graham Greene’s This Gun for Hire . Scouring the debris on the floor, I found the book and rifled through its pages. The disk was gone.

Don’t panic … don’t panic … it has to be here somewhere.

But I did panic. I rummaged again through all the debris, getting more frantic as I couldn’t find it. I must have spent the better part of a half-hour combing every corner of the room, my anxiety growing as it dawned on me that the disk had been taken.

But why take the disk and nothing else? It wasn’t as if it contained secret codes or some revelation that would overturn the foundations of all Judeo-Christian faith. It was just a backup copy of my novel — insignificant to anyone but myself.

The thief — having found nothing of value here — probably pocketed it as a way of saying ‘Fuck You’ for not leaving anything for him to steal .

Or maybe it was Sezer’s henchmen. They knew I was writing something in my ‘office’ at night. Maybe they decided to really stick it to you by lifting the only backup copy of the novel you had.

But it wasn’t my only copy … as I had hidden another disk in a crevice above the ‘emergency exit’ in my office. To retrieve it, however, would mean returning to that building … and I knew that was impossible now. The ransacking of my room — and Mr Beard’s menacing belief that I had set up Sezer and his stooge to take the fall for those murders — heightened my belief that the only thing to do was disappear. But with my laptop still impounded by the cops, I was in a quandary. If I left Paris now, I would be doing so without a copy of the novel I had worked on for the past four months. Though the police might send on my laptop computer at some future date, they also might decide to hang on to it. Which would leave me with nothing to show for all those midnight-to-dawn stints in that claustrophobic room. I had nothing else in my life right now but that novel. I couldn’t … wouldn’t … leave Paris without it.

The fever was spreading. Every joint in my body pained me. But I couldn’t afford to give in to exhaustion. The longer I stayed in Paris, the more chance I would have of ending up like my room: broken into pieces. Time was of the essence. They could be coming for me any minute.

I scrambled through the debris. I found my suitcase. Amid the torn clothes, I discovered a pair of jeans, a shirt, underwear and socks that had not been shredded. I reached into the shower stall and grabbed soap and shampoo and a toothbrush and toothpaste from the medicine cabinet. My portable radio — though badly dented by having been tossed from my bedside table — still worked. Along with everything else I’d rounded up, I dumped it into the suitcase, stuffed the cash and my passport into my jacket pocket, and slammed the broken door on my chambre de bonne , thinking, I’m never coming back here again.

Out in the street, I scanned the rue de Paradis to see if anyone was on the lookout for me. It seemed clear. I wheeled my bag down to the faubourg Saint-Martin. Five minutes and several turns later, I walked into the commissariat de police. I asked to see Inspector Coutard. The man on the desk told me he was out of the building. I asked to see Inspector Leclerc. A phone call was made. I was told to take a seat. Leclerc came downstairs ten minutes later. He nodded hello and immediately noticed my suitcase.