Dedicated to all the ghosts, past and present
Thanks to so many who helped: Karen Fawcett; Joanna Bartholomew and Gala Besson in Menilmontant; Bertrand Bache
As
—a French saying
PARIS
APRIL 1994
Computer security, Aimee had protested, was her field—not spousal surveillance.
The phone reception wavered and flared.
“Right now it’s difficult,” she said. “I’m working, Anais.”
She didn’t want to interrupt her work. Thanks to a client referral, she was dropping off a network systems security proposal at the Electricite de France. Aimee prayed that this would get Leduc Detective back on its feet after a lean winter.
“Please, we have to meet,” Anais said, urgency in her voice. “Rue des Cascades… near pare de Belleville.” Anais’s voice came and went like a piece of laundry whipping in the wind. “I need you.”
“Of course, as soon as I finish. I’m on the outskirts of Paris,” Aimee said. “Twenty kilometers away.”
“I’m scared, Aimee.” Anais was sobbing now.
Aimee felt torn. She heard a muffled noise as if Anais had covered the receiver with her hand.
Birds scattered from hedgerows. Along the gully budding daffodils bowed, skirting a mossy barge canal. Aimee pressed the Citroen’s pedal harder, her cheek reddening in the whipping wind.
“But Anais, I might take some time.”
“Cafe Tlemcen, an old zinc bar, I’m in the back.” Anais’s voice broke. “… get caught….” Aimee heard the unmistakable shrieking of brakes, of shouting.
“Anais, wait!” she said.
Her phone went dead.
MORE THAN an hour later, Aimee found the cafe with dingy lace curtains. She eased out of her partner’s Citroen, which was fitted to accomodate his four-foot stature, and smoothed her black leather pants.
Strains of Arab hip-hop remix drifted in from the street. The narrow cafe overlooked rue des Cascades; no entrance to a back room was in evidence at first glance. Pinball machines from the sixties, their silvered patina rubbed off in places, stood blinking in the corner.
Aimee wondered if she’d made a mistake. This didn’t seem the kind of place Anais would frequent. But she remembered the panic in Anais’s voice.
Apart from a man with his back to her, the cafe’s round wooden tables were empty. He appeared to be speaking with someone who stood behind the counter. Old boxing posters curled away from the brown nicotine- stained wall. She inhaled the odor of espresso and Turkish tobacco.
“Pardon, Monsieur,” she said, combing her fingers through her hair. “I’m supposed to meet someone in your dining room.”
As he swiveled around to look at her, she realized that there was no one else behind the counter. He put down a microphone, clicked a button on a small tape recorder, and cocked a thick eyebrow at her.
“Who would that be?” he said, amusement in his heavy-lidded eyes. His thinning gray hair, combed across his skull, didn’t quite cover the bald top of his head.
A long blue shirtsleeve pinned to his shoulder by a military medal concealed what she imagined were the remains of his arm. Behind the counter sepia photos of military men in desert jeeps were stuck in the tarnished, beveled mirror.
“Anais de …” She stumbled trying to remember Anais’s married name. She’d been to their wedding several years ago. “Anais de Froissart—that’s it. She said she’d be in the back room.”
“The only back room here is the toilet,” he said. “Buy a drink, and you can meet who you like there.”
A
“Perhaps there’s another Cafe Tlemcen?”
Why had Anais suggested this place? Had she made a mistake?
Aimee stepped closer to the counter. “I might have misunderstood my friend. Did a woman use your telephone recently?”
“Who are you, Mademoiselle, if I may ask?”
