Woman in the Fifth

‘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.

‘Planning to move back into your cell?’ he asked.

‘Very funny,’ I said.

‘Leaving Paris then?’

‘A short break to London,’ I said. ‘And I need my laptop computer.’

‘What laptop computer?’

‘The one you confiscated when you raided the office.’

‘I wasn’t part of that assignment. It was another division. If they have the laptop—’

‘Inspector Coutard told me they did have the laptop—’

‘Then you should speak to Inspector Coutard.’

‘But he’s not here now.’

‘He should be back tomorrow—’

The man on the desk came in here.

‘No, he’s taking four days off.’

‘He didn’t bother to tell me,’ Leclerc said.

‘Is there any chance you might still be able to locate the laptop?’ I asked.

‘If it is part of an ongoing investigation … no. I cannot interfere with evidence. And as the inspector in charge is not here to approve its return to its alleged owner—’

‘I am the owner.’

‘So you say. But without Inspector Coutard here to verify—’

‘Couldn’t you phone him on his cellphone?’

‘While he is on his vacances? Impossible. More to the point, he would tell you the same thing. If the computer is part of an investigation, it stays with us until we have finished the investigation.’

‘But couldn’t I copy something off the hard disk?’

‘That would be tampering with evidence.’

‘It’s just my novel.’

‘Your novel could be part of the evidence.’

‘But how?’

‘As it is not my investigation—’

‘I need a copy of my novel so I can continue writing it.’

‘You didn’t make a backup copy?’

‘I lost it,’ I said, not wanting to tell Leclerc about my trashed room, which might lead to more questions and him insisting that I stay around for a few more days in Paris … which I simply wasn’t prepared to do.

‘Too bad,’ he said. ‘Surely a proper novelist makes more than one copy of his work in progress.’

‘I’m just a goddamn amateur.’

‘No need to get touchy, monsieur. And if you don’t mind me saying so, you are looking very unwell and smelling rather ripe.’