Woman in the Fifth

Then, ‘I will tell Megan you called.’

The line went dead.

You’ve just overheard all that, haven’t you? You must be very proud of your handiwork. Another dead man to add to the tally of my adversaries you’ve rubbed out. And you expect me to be pleased … when all I can really feel is sheer overriding guilt.

Stop, stop. You need sleep. Deep restorative sleep. Take pills. Take whisky. Take whatever you can. Just get back to the hotel and hide under the blankets until day breaks and you can flee everything.

So I returned to my grim room in the Le Normandie. I repacked my bag. I set the alarm on my portable radio for five fifteen a.m. I took pills, I climbed into the damp, saggy bed. I clutched the pillow against me. I kept hearing Margit say, ‘You can’t leave now.’

You know, don’t you? I’m abandoning you come morning and there’s nothing you can do to stop me getting on that train. Spook me all you want. Follow me spectrally to London. I’m still leaving. This is over.

The pills did their stuff. I conked out. When the radio snapped on seven hours later, I jumped up, certain that she was in the room with me. Did that mean she inhabited my unconscious as I slept? She watched me sleep, didn’t she? Just as she was standing nearby as I sat in that plywood cubicle, overhearing my conversation with Susan. And now she was plotting to get Susan and …

It’s morning. You’ve slept. The train leaves in just over two hours. Go get the disk. Go to the station. Vanish. And this will vanish with you. ‘Faith is the antithesis of proof. ‘ She told you that as a way of playing with your head. The cut on your hand? You cut your hand, acting out this delusional fantasy. The concierge is right: you’ve lost it. Get the disk. Get the train. Find a sympathetic doctor. Get some pharmaceuticals to end this phantasmagoria in which you’ve been living. Get back to Planet Earth.

I stood in the tiny shower and turned my face up toward the enervated spray of water. I dressed quickly and was out the front door by five forty. The streets were empty, though a few stallholders in the market on the faubourg Saint-Denis were taking deliveries from assorted vans. I turned up the rue des Petites Ecuries, rolling my suitcase behind me, stealing a quick glance at the shuttered Internet cafe. Au revoir, Mr Beard … and fuck you too. I reached my former place of work. I stopped at the top of the alleyway and peered down. Light was just breaking in the sky, casting a gray-blue tint on its cracked cobbles. No one could be seen lurking in the shadows. I turned back to the street. Empty, deserted, even devoid of cars. I checked onlooking windows. All shuttered or curtained. No one peering out at me. The coast was clear.

OK, here we go. Start counting and promise yourself by the time you reach sixty you’ll have come and gone.

One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, four-one …

I reached the front door and looked up and saw that the video camera had been prized off its bracket. Probably taken by the cops as evidence.

I had my key at the ready. I opened the door.

… nine-one-thousand, ten-one-thousand, eleven-one-thousand …

Inside, the corridor was empty, some police tape hanging limply in front of the steel door at the far end; a door now open. But I didn’t stop to inspect what was in this once-forbidden zone. I left my bag by the front door and dashed up the stairs, second key at the ready. I unlocked the door.

… seventeen-one-thousand, eighteen-one-thousand, nineteen-one-thousand, twenty-one- thousand …

My desk had been turned upside down, the emergency door pried open … the escape route that I never had to use. The cops had also pulled up much of the linoleum, but they hadn’t seen the small crevice above the emergency exit where I had secreted the disk.

… twenty-three-one-thousand, twenty-four-one-thousand, twenty-five-one-thousand …

I crossed the room and reached up into the crevice. My fingers touched the disk, but they now couldn’t gain purchase around it. Shit. Shit. Shit. I tried to pry a finger to one side of the disk in an attempt to push it forward, then started digging at it with my key.

But just as I started to edge it forward, something happened.

There was a large bang behind me as the office door slammed. And this was immediately followed by the sound of the lock being turned twice.

I dashed across the room and started yanking on the door handle. It wouldn’t give. I inserted my key and attempted to turn the lock. It wouldn’t budge. When I tried to pull the key out and start again, it remained frozen within the lock. I yanked and yanked on the key, jiggling it madly from side to side. It wouldn’t give. I kicked the door, two, three, four times. It wouldn’t give … it wouldn’t fucking give …

Then I heard another sound. A loud whoosh — followed by an explosion of hot air from the one ventilator shaft in the room. But this wasn’t just an overcharged blast from the heating system — as the air which blew out quickly turned into a gray toxic cloud. Within seconds, the room was fogged in, a sulfuric stench enveloping me, singeing my eyes, my lips, my nose, my lungs. I clawed my way through the cloud to the emergency exit. It was already starting to fill up with smoke, but after about ten steps I hit a pocket of fresher air. The corridor was so narrow I kept hitting my elbows off its sides as I ran toward its end.

But when I reached it, I didn’t run into a door that would lead me to some sort of freedom. I just hit a wall. A flat brick wall, against which I crashed. I fell down, stunned. The smoke billowed into the tunnel. All fresh air vanished. I began to choke, to gag, to spew blood through my nose. The cloud thickened. My lungs now felt scorched. I pitched over on to the dirt floor. I continued to gag, to vomit. And I screamed, ‘Margit! … Margit! … Margit!’

Nothing happened … except that breathing became impossible.

‘Margit! … Margit! … Margit!’

My voice was stifled now, my vision fading. And somewhere within all the vaporous confusion, there was one pervading thought: So this is what death is … a slow choke to black.

‘Margit! … Margit! … Mar …’

My voice was fading. I coughed, I sputtered, I heaved. I should have panicked because death was near. Instead, I began to surrender to asphyxiation. The panic was replaced by a weird calmness: a sense that dying — even in such appalling circumstances — was the most natural of progressions. You’re here. You’re not. And everything beyond this smoke-filled room simply continues on.

But the moment I accepted that death was nothing strange, the strangest thing happened.

The door burst open and a fireman dashed in. He was wearing a gas mask and carrying a spare in his hand. He grabbed me and slung the mask over my face. As the rush of oxygen hit, he said two words, ‘Lucky man.’

Twenty

I SPENT THE next five days in hospital. My condition — I learned later — was initially listed as ‘serious, but stable’. No burns, but I had suffered severe smoke inhalation and there were worries about the lasting effect on my lungs. My eyes had also been badly singed by the toxic fumes. For the first forty-eight hours they were covered with saline compresses until the inflamation died down. I was also attached to a respirator until the pulmonary specialist ordered a further set of X-rays on me and then decided that, though they had received a scorching, the damage to my lungs would be repaired in time.

‘But don’t even think about getting on a plane for the next six months,’ he told me. ‘Any change in cabin pressure could seriously damage the entire pulmonary system, with fatal consequences. You will simply have to stay put for a while, and consider yourself fortunate to have survived such an incident.’

Everyone who attended me in hospital told me how fortunate I was. The police too. Even Coutard — who came by to see me once I was taken off the respirator. As became quickly apparent, his reasons for seeing me had little to do with enquiring after my health.

‘Providence was with you,’ he said, pulling up a chair next to my bed. ‘The fireman who rescued you told me that if he had arrived three minutes after he did, you would have definitely died.’