Woman in the Fifth

concern: Omar. The sonofabitch was a blackmailer and a moron who wouldn’t think anything of selling me down the river. Still, the scheme that Margit devised for tripping him up would now result in … well, a fast death might be the mildest of punishments once Yanna’s husband and his collection of goons got their hands on the man who had ‘raped’ his wife and given her a disease (even though Yanna’s husband probably picked it up from one of the whores he frequently slept with). The twisted morality of all this — do I endanger somebody who is threatening to endanger me? — preoccupied me all night. Then dawn came and I was out in the street, walking back to my chambre de bonne, a bag of pains au chocolat in hand.

I mounted the stairs to my room. When I reached my floor, my bladder felt full from all the water I had been drinking that night (doctor’s orders), so I turned toward the hallway toilet.

I opened the door and suddenly jumped back in horror, a scream leaping out of my throat. There before me was Omar. He lay slumped on the toilet seat. His throat had been cut. There was blood everywhere. And a toilet brush was sticking out of his mouth.

Fifteen

INSPECTOR JEAN-MARIE COUTARD was a flabby man. He was in his fifties and short — maybe five foot six — with a double chin, a large gut and a red face that made him look self-basting. His clothes were a jumble of contrasting styles and patterns: a check sports jacket, gray trousers, a striped shirt dappled with food stains, a paisley tie. His lack of sartorial interest mirrored his general air of unhealthiness. He had a cigarette screwed into his mouth, and he seemed to be puffing away on it in an attempt to wake himself up. It was only seven fifteen in the morning, and he looked like he had been summoned directly from his bed to this crime scene.

When he arrived, there was already a crowd of people around the tiny bathroom. Three plainclothes policemen, two forensic guys in white coats and latex gloves, a photographer, and a medical man examining the grotesque mess that was Omar. Two plainclothes inspectors then showed up, one of whom was Coutard.

The uniformed cops had been the first on the scene. They came within ten minutes of me racing downstairs and calling them from the phone kiosk at the end of rue de Paradis. Running out to phone them had been an instinctual reaction — and one made in the complete shock of the moment. As soon as I had done so, the thought struck me, They are going to ask where I was when the crime took place. As I couldn’t tell them about my ‘work’, I raced back to my room and ‘unmade’ my bed, hoping that it looked like I had slept there that night. Then I started thinking fast, trying to construct the alibi I would give the cops when they arrived.

I charged downstairs again to let the police in: two young officers who followed me upstairs and tried hard not to blanch when they saw the bloody state of Omar in the toilet. Within moments they were calling for backup. One of them posted himself outside to make certain nobody left the building. The other stepped into my room with me and asked to see my papers. When I handed over the American passport, he looked at me quizzically.

‘Why do you live here?’ he asked.

‘It’s cheap.’

Then he began to ask me some basic questions. What time did I find the body? Where was I last night? (‘I couldn’t sleep, so I went out for a walk.’) What time was that? (‘Around two.’) And where did I go? (‘I just walked along the canal Saint-Martin, then eventually crossed the river and followed the Seine as far as Notre-Dame, then headed back here, stopping at the local patisserie for pains au chocolat.’) Did I know the deceased? (‘We were merely passing acquaintances.’) Did I have any idea who might have done this? (‘None at all.’)

After this brief Q&A, I was told to wait here in my room until the inspector arrived. The cop held on to my passport — and left me alone to my thoughts. My alibi sounded flimsy, full of holes … though, at least, they’d be able to confirm with the guy at the patisserie that I was there around six this morning. I lay down on my bed and shut my eyes and tried to expunge every grisly detail of Omar on that toilet: the splatter- effect crimson blood, the deep oozing gorge around his throat, the fact that his trousers were down and he must have been in mid-bowel movement when the attack happened. Two people must have killed him: one held him down while his partner shoved the toilet brush in his mouth to stifle his screams before slitting his throat. Had Yanna somehow managed to call her husband that night in Turkey to tell him about the ‘rape’, and then he phoned some friends who … ?

No, that was completely implausible — as Yanna told me he was on the night flight back to Paris yesterday. Which meant he would have been out of contact. So rule out Yanna’s husband. But knowing Omar — and how he pissed off everyone who ventured into his path — he must have had a lot of enemies.

That was Inspector Coutard’s first question to me.

‘Did the deceased have any ongoing disputes with anyone?’

I had figured this question would arise and decided to play dumb.

‘I didn’t know the man.’

‘Even though he lived next door to you?’

‘We didn’t speak.’

‘You shared the same floor, the same toilet.’

‘You can share a communal toilet and still not speak with someone.’

Coutard reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out my passport. I tried not to look surprised. He flicked through its pages, stopping at the two sole entry stamps.

‘You entered France on December 28 of last year, via Canada.’

‘That’s right. My connecting flight was from Montreal.’

‘From where?’

‘Chicago.’

‘That is where you last lived in the United States?’

‘No, I lived in …’

And I named the town in Ohio.

‘And what made you come to France on December 28 of last year?’

I was prepared for this.

‘My marriage had fallen apart and I had lost my job at the college where I taught, and I decided to flee my problems, so …’

‘There are no direct flights from Chicago to Paris?’ he asked, and I could see the subtext behind that question: If you flew here via another country, perhaps you weren’t just fleeing a failed marriage.

‘The Air Canada flight via Montreal was the cheapest option.’

‘What sort of work do you do, Monsieur Ricks?’

‘Novelist.’

‘What is the name of your publisher?’

‘I don’t have one.’

‘Ah, so you are an aspiring novelist.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you have lived on the rue de Paradis since … ?’

‘Early January.’

‘An intriguing place for an American to live — but I’m certain you have been asked this question already today.’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘And your neighbor, the late Monsieur Omar Tariq. He was a good neighbor?’

‘We had little contact.’

‘Do you know anything about him?’

‘Nothing at all.’

He nodded, taking this in. Then, ‘No sense whatsoever of who might have done this to him?’