Red to Black

station.

The address is a five-storey, grey-stone building that rambles a long way back. There are twenty or so bells at the main doorway with nameplates that for the most part have no names written on them; small flats or studios for the more modest citizens of Luxembourg, a building for students, perhaps, or older people who have fallen through the net of Luxembourg’s wealth.

The flat number Frank has written on the scrap of paper is number ten. Finn walks past the door once and then retraces his steps and pauses at the steps leading up to the door. He looks at an estate agent’s sign and copies down the telephone number. He casually scans the street. He thinks about walking up the stone steps, but if he rings the bell now, he risks a rebuttal before he can even get inside. The boy is scared, Frank has said. Why would he let a stranger in?

There are few people on the street. Finn crosses back over it and studies a few signs belonging to other house agents. Then he settles on the far side of the street, half concealed down some cellar steps, and waits.

After more than an hour standing in the damp cold, and with several false starts, he sees a man who appears to be approaching the main door of the block that interests him. He is a young man and he carries a small brown bag of groceries. Slowing as he approaches the stone steps, the man fumbles in his coat pocket and halts completely as he reaches the foot of the steps up to the door of the building.

Finn crosses the road. He is leaping up the steps behind the man as the man reaches the door and, still fumbling, inserts a key.

Finn stands at the young man’s shoulder, with a genuinely grateful and somewhat foolish smile on his face, and looks with all the charming appeal he possesses into the man’s eyes.

‘Thank goodness you’ve come,’ he says, stamping and shaking with cold on the step below him. ‘I’ve been waiting nearly an hour and I haven’t got my key.’

The young man turns, the door half-open now as he juggles the key and the bag of groceries, and stares at Finn. He’s a student perhaps, Finn thinks, a temporary lodger in the building, and with the carelessness of a student who believes no doors, anywhere, should ever be locked, he silently shrugs and Finn enters after him. They climb the first staircase one after another and then the young man peels off down a corridor on the first floor without a backward glance and, without pausing, Finn climbs up further to the floor above before he stops to check his whereabouts.

He must be quick. He looks at the first numbers. Eight, nine. Ten is around the corner of a dingy corridor. He walks along a faded, worn red carpet until he stands outside a door with ‘10’ painted roughly in white paint on its peeling blue wood. He hears music playing from behind it, the muffled wailing lilt of a female singer singing a Portuguese song.

Finn pauses, catches his breath. Then he knocks twice before he detects the occupant of the room walking towards the door across a wooden floor. A lock is snapped, the door opens a few inches on a chain, and revealed is a tired, pale face with a wispy orange beard that looks like thin tumbleweed.

‘I’m from the property agents,’ Finn says. ‘Come to check the windows.’

‘The windows are fine,’ the boy says.

‘I’m sure they are. But we’re painting the outside. If you wouldn’t mind, I need to make my report.’

There is a pause while the boy thinks and makes the decision between risking letting a stranger inside and risking offending the property agents. When the latter has overcome his evident reluctance, the boy pulls the chain off its slide and opens the door.

The room has an old carpet that was once olive-green, Finn guesses, but now wears the scars of many tenants who’ve had no interest in the apartment’s long-term welfare. Dirty net curtains hang off a pole in front of the windows, there is an unmade futon on the floor, a shelf of books above it, and the main part of the room consists of a desk covered with laptop computers, papers, wires, boxes of software and coffee cups. Finn looks around.

‘Comfortable here?’ Finn says.

‘The windows are over there,’ the boy replies. Finn shuts the door behind him and stands still in front of it.

‘Having trouble paying the rent?’ Finn says.

‘How would you know?’

‘That’s exactly what I would know.’

‘Who are you? What’s your name?’ the boy says nervously.

Finn takes a small transparent plastic packet from his pocket and holds it out. ‘That’s three months’ rent,’ he says.

The boy doesn’t move.

‘We have about ten minutes,’ Finn says, ‘before anyone watching the outside of the building wonders what I’m doing here.’

He wastes no time now.

‘You have a number to call if anyone asks questions about Exodi?’ he snaps.

The boy looks like he’s been hit.

‘Maybe,’ he says faintly. ‘What’s it to you?’

‘The longer I’m here, the more anyone watching will think you’ve told me. It’s in your interests to be quick. When I leave, call the number they gave you. Tell them exactly what happened. Say, of course, what I asked you and that you told me nothing. Say I was persistent and that it took you ten minutes to get rid of me.’

Finn throws the money on to the futon but doesn’t move from the door. The boy looks paler than ever.

‘What did you do at Exodi?’ Finn says. ‘What was your specific job?’

The boy doesn’t reply.

‘I’m not from here,’ Finn says. ‘I’m not from Luxembourg. I’m nothing to do with them. But if you don’t talk to me, I will tell them you did talk to me. Got it? You have a few seconds to start answering my questions. After that…it’s up to you.’

The boy hangs his head and looks around for some escape.

‘What did you do at Exodi?’ Finn repeats. ‘We’re wasting valuable time.’

‘I was hired on a salary to service the computers,’ came the faint and angry reply.

‘For what kind of business?’

‘The company didn’t seem to do much.’ The boy sits down at his desk, apparently exhausted, and faces Finn.

‘What did it do?’

‘It didn’t do anything that I could see,’ the boy almost shouts.

‘Why did they hire you, then?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe they thought they’d be busy and then weren’t.’

‘Nothing coming in or out of the office, nothing on the computers you serviced, no one visiting for meetings?’

‘That was the thing,’ the boy protests, and Finn sees that it is genuine. ‘There didn’t seem to be anything going on at all. It wasn’t like a normal office. There was no business in or out. No one ever came. Just once…’ The boy’s voice fades out.

‘What?’ Finn prompts.

‘A couple of guys came into the office. They said they were from Exodi in Paris. I was introduced to them. I don’t know why.’

‘Who were they?’

‘I don’t know. Like you, they spoke lousy French. One might have been from Eastern Europe. They looked rich,’ he adds.

‘Where in Paris?’ Finn says.

‘It was an address near the George V Hotel, I remember that, because one of them was staying at the hotel and said it was handy for the office.’ The boy tries to find some strength. ‘Why don’t you leave. I’m nothing to do with them.’

‘I’ll leave when I’ve finished and that’s up to you. But remember. Be quick, or they won’t believe you.’

‘You bastard,’ he said, but the weakness behind his voice contained no threat.

‘Who told you not to speak about Exodi?’ Finn snaps. ‘Who called you?’