Woman in the Fifth

May I say that I don’t believe you. I know you are hiding something. Clarity, monsieur, is essential now.’

Why didn’t I tell him about the all-night job? Because I might also be implicated in whatever was going on downstairs.

And it still wouldn’t clear me of suspicion in the death of Omar. Who would vouch for me being in fulltime employment?

Nobody.

‘I am hiding nothing, Inspector.’

His lips tightened. He tapped two fingers on the desk. He reached for the phone. He swiveled around in his chair and spoke in a low voice. Then he hung up and swiveled back toward me.

‘You are free to go, monsieur. But I must inform you that we will be keeping your passport … and that I advise you not to leave Paris.’

‘I’m going nowhere.’

‘We’ll see about that.’

Sixteen

THEY’RE FOLLOWING ME.

Now I was sure of this. Just as I was also sure that it was only a matter of time before they found out where I worked at night, and raided the place.

Someone’s on your tail.

Had an innocent passer-by seen me on the street, he would have thought, That man is mad. Because I had developed the paranoid habit of turning around every two minutes or so to see who was behind me. This was no neurotic knee-jerk response that only lasted a few hours after I was allowed to leave the commissariat de police. No, this became a full-blown tic — and one which was difficult to control. Every two minutes — one hundred and twenty seconds exactly (I was counting it down in my head) — I had to spin around and try to surprise the gumshoe who was shadowing me.

But no one was ever there.

That’s because they know how to make themselves vanish … to duck into a doorway as soon as they see you twirling around.

Several times, this abrupt pirouette nearly landed me into trouble. An elderly African woman — using a walker to help her negotiate the Faubourg Saint-Martin — screamed when I spun around. I apologized profusely, but she still glared at me as if I was delusional. The second time, the victims were two young toughs. They were both around twenty, of Arab origin, dressed in tight leather jackets and wearing cheap sunglasses. Their initial shock was quickly replaced by umbrage and aggression. Immediately they grabbed me and shoved me into a doorway.

‘What you fucking doing?’ one of them hissed.

‘I thought you were the cops.’

‘Stop talking shit,’ the other said. ‘You thought we were following you, right?’

‘I honestly didn’t think—’

‘Racist asshole, thinks we’re a couple of sand niggers, wanting to jump him for his cheap watch.’

‘I meant no disrespect. I—’

‘Yes, you did,’ the first said, then spat on me. Simultaneously the other guy shoved me hard, knocking me off my feet.

‘You do that again to us,’ he said, ‘we cut you the next times.’

But as soon as I had picked myself up and wiped that man’s spittle from my jacket and headed off down the street, I still found myself turning around every two minutes.

I’m sure they’re there. I’m sure they’re watching me at all times.

When I left the commissariat, I decided to do what I always do whenever life overwhelms me: I hid in a movie. (Come to think of it, I hide in a movie even if I am finding things moderately cope-able.) There was a Clint Eastwood festival at the Action Ecoles — so I caught The Beguiled (Wounded Civil War veteran ends up in a house of spinster women, starts sleeping his way through them, and pays a horrible price for his sexual profligacy … I must have been insane to have chosen this movie — especially as I had seen it twenty years earlier and therefore vaguely remembered what I was letting myself in for.)

Afterward, it was time for work. Now I turned around every minute, reducing this to thirty seconds as I approached the alleyway and the steel door, behind which …

I spun around. No one there. I walked back to the intersection of the alley and the street. I looked both ways. No one there. I walked back down the alley, turning one last time. No one there. I opened the door and locked it behind me. I went up to my office, knowing that tonight I wouldn’t get a single word written … that I would be watching the monitor nonstop, just in case anyone suspicious poked their head into the alleyway, looking around.

My eyes hardly left the monitor for the entire six hours of my shift. Somewhere toward the end of the night, the thought struck me, You’re a little unhinged by all this. To which the only reply could be, Being under suspicion for murder does strange things to one’s psyche.

When I left my work at six, however, I did discover someone waiting at the end of the alley for me. It was Sezer’s stooge, Mr Tough Guy. He blocked my path as I approached him.

‘Monsieur Sezer wants to see you,’ he said.

‘At this hour?’ I said, trying to appear cool — even though I was suddenly anything but cool.

‘He is awake.’

‘I need to sleep.’

‘You sleep afterwards.’

‘I’d like to stop by the boulangerie and pick up—’

He had me by the arm.

‘You come now,’ he said.

So back we went to my building and up the stairs to Sezer Confection.Himself was seated behind his desk, sipping a demitasse of coffee.

‘You keep early hours,’ I said.

‘I don’t need much sleep,’ he said. ‘Unlike you.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘You come home every morning at six ten, six fifteen the latest, after stopping at the patisserie for two pains au chocolat. You sleep until two p.m. You pick up your wages at the Internet cafe on rue des Petites Ecuries. You generally eat at a cafe near the canal Saint-Martin or the Gare de l’Est. You spend most of your days at the movies — though every few days, you pay a visit to someone on the rue Linne in the Fifth. A woman, I presume?’

‘You’ve had someone following me?’ I asked, my voice just a little shrill.

‘We simply like to monitor our employees’ movements …’

‘Our employees. Am I working for you?’

‘Put it this way: we are all working for the same organization.’

‘And what organization might that be?’

‘You surely don’t expect me to tell you that.’

‘Well, how about telling me why you told the cops that I killed Omar?’

‘I never said such a thing. I simply informed them, under interrogation, that you’d had an ongoing dispute with Monsieur Omar about the condition of the toilet.’

‘Under interrogation? You make it sound like they were beating you with a rubber hose.’

‘Like most people, I am not at ease when in conversation with the police.’