The Paris Affair

by Pip Drysdale

  As I shut the door behind me and flick on the light, I subconsciously check the dark corners for a swarthy silhouette. I drop my bag on the counter, reach into my pocket, pull out that card and trace the lettering with my eyes. My phone beeps and I reach for it, expecting it to be Camilla. But it’s not. It’s a news notification.

  Noah X questioned further over Sabine Roux murder.

  And isn’t it ironic how this morning that headline was exactly what I wanted to read. But now, just twelve hours later, I’m not so sure. Because now I’ve seen that video. Now I know someone else might have had a reason to want Sabine dead.

  Chapitre vingt-sept

  We’re all sitting around the big dark wood table, an ominous silver light seeping in through the windows as we industriously fuck around with notepads and printouts in preparation for our weekly editorial meeting. My phone lights up from the table and I grab it.

  A message.

  Camilla.

  I have a really bad feeling about this.

  And she’s not just talking about the PI card and the photographs I sent her late last night from the cab. That tabloid in the UK chose this morning to release its next instalment of fear, with news that ‘inside sources’ claimed both Sabine and Matilde’s bodies had blunt force trauma to the back of the skull. Camilla’s been texting about it all morning. And I’ve been cursing myself for sending her anything at all. It was supposed to reassure her but now, with this, all it’s done is stress her out.

  I let out a deep breath, put my phone down face up beside my notepad and look out the window: the clouds outside are the colour of deep dark bruises and it’ll rain soon. I hope if Mr PI is lurking outside, he forgot his umbrella.

  Hyacinth closes the door with a bang and then sits down at her spot at the head of the table.

  ‘Nathalie, you’re up first,’ she says, without her usual fake-nice introduction. I can feel her bad mood seeping off her.

  Nathalie looks down at her notes and her face goes a little pink.

  ‘They’re opening a new sensory-deprivation restaurant in—’

  ‘The ones where you eat in the dark?’ Hyacinth interrupts. I’m pretty sure if her forehead moved she’d be frowning right now.

  ‘Yes,’ says Nathalie, trepidatious.

  ‘No,’ Hyacinth says. Short. Sharp. Definite. ‘It’s boring. Too done. What else have you got?’

  Nathalie’s cheeks go from pink to red, as she looks down at her list.

  ‘We could hire a Porsche or a Ferrari for a day and drive it through Paris, taking pictures… we could do a few things like that. Show how easy it is to fake an influencer lifestyle.’

  Hyacinth shakes her head. ‘No.’

  Nathalie’s voice is crackling, strangled. ‘What about writing up a sober rave?’

  Hyacinth thinks for a moment and the room rings with silence. We all feel bad for Nathalie but none of us want to end up in Hyacinth’s crosshairs.

  ‘Okay. But keep brainstorming.’ Her gaze moves to me. Shit.

  ‘What have you got, Harper?’

  The words come out fast, ‘There’s a Charlotte Gainsbourg concert?’

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘But find an angle.’

  ‘Claudia?’ comes Hyacinth’s voice. I can hear Claudia telling her about how some celebrity or other is in town and rumoured to be staying at Le Meurice, about how she can get tickets to some sort of after party, but my gaze has moved to Stan. He catches my eye and smirks, and I look away. Down at my notes. Like I don’t know what he’s up to. I circle Charlotte Gainsbourg a couple of times and my phone glows with a message. My eyes snap to the screen. Maybe it’s Thomas. Maybe he’s found something…

  But no.

  It’s another text from Camilla: What are you going to do?

  * * *

  I weave my way through the darkening street, my pulse all semi-quavers. I can see my destination just up ahead, past the traffic lights. According to my sat nav, that’s where the PI has his offices. I’m not really sure what I’m going to say to him, but I want to walk through that door and have him see my face and know I’m onto him. It’s that, or just let him keep shadowing me. I move past a grocer to my left, watching the little blue dot on my phone move towards the address. And then I’m here. It says I’m here.

  I look around and across the street, frowning and looking up at the stone walls for a number. This is it: number 349.

  And it’s a nail salon.

  There’s a small woman watching me from inside. I pull the door open – it jingles with a bell – and smile at her.

  ‘Hi,’ I say.

  ‘Bonjour,’ she replies.

  And so in French I say, ‘I’m looking for this.’ And then I show her the card.

  She shrugs and her mouth does that French pfff thing, her eyes widening as she looks down at it and then up again. ‘Is not here,’ she says in English.

  I look around. Is she lying? Is there a back room?

  But all I can see are walls of nail varnish colours and massage seats with footbaths.

  I smile at her and say ‘Pardon’, like I’m silly and made a mistake. Then I reach for my phone and call the number on the card.

  It doesn’t even ring.

  He doesn’t exist.

  And if he doesn’t exist, if he’s not a PI, then Stan didn’t hire him.

  I stand statue still, my mind whirring.

  Whoever has been following me, whoever was waiting outside Thomas’s flat, is not only not a PI, but he had the foresight to make up some business cards in case he was called out. It’s that last part that has my stomach twisting. Everything inside me is screaming, ‘Leave’, and so I turn left and head for the metro and walk as fast as I can.

  * * *

  Forty minutes later I’m emerging from the metro stairs, my stomach is growling and I’m thinking about the sushi I’m going to get for dinner when I reach for my phone to check the time.

  One missed call from Thomas.

  My heart speeds up.

  Finally.

  I keep step with the pedestrian traffic, and as I head past a real estate agency with photographs of well furnished, overpriced apartments in the window, I dial his number. It rings as I move past a tabac.

  Briinngg. Brinngg.

  ‘Harper?’ he says, as I get to the road.

  ‘Hey,’ I say, pushing a finger against my free ear to block out the sound of traffic. ‘Did you find something?’

  ‘I did,’ he says. ‘Can we meet?’

  Fuck. I don’t want to meet up. Please don’t let him think last night meant something.

  ‘I can’t right now, I’m on my way to a work thing,’ I say, in a tone that says: I wish I could. ‘Can you just tell me the basics?’ The lights change and I cross the road.

  ‘Well Genovexa is a company based in the Caymans.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say, as I get to the other side.

  ‘Chances are it’s a shell company,’ he continues.

  I stop and step to the side of the pavement, leaning up against the cool brick of a boutique as pedestrians move past me. This is exactly the sort of opaque situation I was hoping he’d come back with. Because I’ve read about shell companies before. They exist in name only and they have no employees. They’re not illegal in and of themselves, but given Je sais ce que tu fais, Agnès, this could mean I’m onto something.

  ‘Who owns it?’ I ask.

  Please say Agnès Bisset… Please say Agnès Bisset…

  ‘Well, I had to pull a favour to find this out,’ he says, taking his sweet time. He wants me to know I owe him now. ‘But it’s owned by a Liechtenstein foundation called Requiem.’

  Shit.

  ‘And who owns the foundation?’ I ask, only thinly veiling my irritation: is he being intentionally obtuse so I have to meet up with him? All I want to know is where the buck stops.

  ‘Foundations don’t have owners, Harper,’ he says. And there’s an edge to his voice that tells me he’s picked up on my inner dialogue.<
br />
  My mind goes into overdrive. That sounds illegal.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, resetting my tone to sweet. ‘But I don’t understand though. So, some company with no owners issued a bond worth one hundred million. That doesn’t make sense to me.’

  ‘Companies raise money this way all the time. There’s nothing strange about that part… but look, let’s talk about all this in person.’

  And there it is again.

  ‘So, they just gave someone a bond worth one hundred million?’

  ‘No, Harper, usually someone would have to invest capital first. The aim being to get one hundred million out of the deal when the bond matures and the company is worth significantly more. That or the equivalent in shares. It’s speculative.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Okay.’ That makes sense.

  ‘Look, I want to help you with this. I’m guessing there’s a reason you had that picture of the bond to start with, a reason you were looking into it?’

  Oh. Right.

  That’s why he wants to meet up. He knows I’m onto something. He wants more information.

  The fucker wants to steal my story.

  He pauses, giving me time to speak up, but I don’t bite. Instead, I start walking again, focusing on my footing because it’s getting dark and there’s dog poop. ‘But I need all the information or I can’t help you piece it together,’ he continues. And then he pauses yet again and waits for me to crack.

  But I’m not the kind of girl who cracks.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ I say in a small, fragile voice that says I’m cautious but maybe if you try really hard you can manipulate me. ‘I’ll get in trouble.’ But I want to get off the phone now. ‘I’m just about to head into the metro,’ I lie. ‘Chat soon.’ And then we hang up and I can see the sushi place up ahead. I’m passing the laundromat – I need to do my washing soon – and I glance at my reflection in the window. But my gaze catches on the edges of the machines and I’m hit with a tidal wave of memories. That last time I was there my skin smelled of orange blossom and it was the night before they revealed they’d found Sabine’s body. I was watching her entire Vimeo page…

  Snippets of her videos flicker in my mind. A crowd… A tall man against the wall…

  My hands are white with cold as I lean against the window and pull up a browser, going to her page. I scan down the videos, past the couple on the bridge, the busker counting his money in le Bois de Boulogne, the group of students huddling together and checking for onlookers and then, there it is.

  The video I’m remembering.

  I click on it.

  I watch a group of well-dressed people swirl around each other in Le Voltage. Then the camera focuses on the opposite wall. Two people are speaking.

  One is Agnès Bisset.

  And the other is a certain tall and creepy fake PI.

  Chapitre vingt-huit

  My stomach twists as I reach for my phone, scroll through to my Instagram messages and stare down at my unanswered words: Noah, can we talk. It’s important.

  It’s Friday morning – over 24 hours since he was taken in for questioning – and according to Google, that’s the standard length of time to be garde à vue. So I know he has his phone back.

  I also know he’s seen my message. I know this as there’s a little ‘seen’ beneath my words. Yet he has chosen not to answer.

  And I need him to answer.

  Because there are only two reasons Agnès Bisset would be having me followed. One of them is: Noah, jealousy, the usual suspect. The other is: she somehow knows I’m onto her. And call it a journalistic hunch, but I just know it’s the second one.

  Which means this is a real story.

  The kind of story that makes a career.

  She’s following me because she’s scared I’m going to expose her.

  Which I absolutely fucking will. But I need more information. The sort of information someone like Noah might have. Because he was married to her. He must have seen something.

  I reach for my phone and try again. I can’t tell him what I know over text, it’s too volatile and what if Ms Bisset has spyware on his US phone too, like she did on his other one?

  And so I settle on: Please.

  And then I take a deep breath, look back at the page on my screen and glance over the paragraph I’ve now read and reread ten times in the last thirty minutes. Hyacinth sent me back notes on my photography exhibition article this morning and she wants it in by 5 pm. Fair enough, I should be well and truly done with it by now but I can’t focus. I don’t care about an exhibition right now. I care about things like the fact that creepy fake PI was probably following Sabine too. He’s probably the one who killed her.

  I take a sip of cold coffee and bite on my inner cheek, but this is cup number three today and I’m already jittery as hell as I think about headlines like ‘Does Paris Have a Serial Killer?’

  Because I have a sick and twisted theory of my own.

  Maybe that tabloid wasn’t wrong after all. Maybe both bodies did share similarities like blunt force trauma to the back of the skull and strangulation. Maybe they shared every detail that was leaked to the press about Matilde’s case. And maybe that wasn’t a coincidence; Agnès Bisset could have just taken all the information about Matilde’s murder available in the newspapers and had Sabine killed the same way. What a great way to cover her tracks.

  It was a foolproof plan as long as nobody saw that video and heard: Je sais ce que tu fais, Agnès.

  But I did.

  And fuck, what if Agnès Bisset somehow knows that?

  I stare at my phone. I need Noah to reply. Now.

  ‘I know! What a beautiful day!’ Claudia low-key screams from behind me, and I’m far too caffeinated for this shit today. I swivel in my chair. She’s started up on a phone call. Judy got her a headset to try to shut her up, but for some reason she took it as a licence to be mobile. Now she’s pacing around the office grinning at whoever is on the other end of the line. I glare at her, our eyes meet, and she moves in the opposite direction, then I turn back to my desk just in time to see my phone light up with a message.

  Yes. Yes. Yes.

  You have a message from @NoahXartist.

  Yes. Yes. Yes.

  I lurch for it, my blood thinned with relief.

  Fuck you, Harper Brown.

  Uh-oh. How does he know my real name? The missed call. In that bar with Camilla. He would have heard my voicemail message. Did he google me? Realise Harper Brown looked a lot like Grace?

  Shit.

  But this is ridiculous. It’s a name – who cares?

  Except: The Paris Observer. He knows I’m a journalist. How the hell am I going to get him to talk to me now?

  I can hear Claudia screeching with laughter from the other side of the room. What if he won’t talk to me? What then? If I can’t write this story I’m going to need to go to the police. But every time I consider that my brain starts up a PowerPoint presentation of all the photographs I found of a young Agnès Bisset, her arms interlinked with the influential and well connected. She has friends in high places. People who can press mute on the truth. And even if the police decided I was onto something and followed it up, there would be a long lead time between an investigation and trial. Lots of time to destroy evidence. And what am I, if not evidence?

  I have to get him to answer.

  I scan my memory banks… tracker… spyware… common ground.

  And so I scroll through to Sabine’s Vimeo page and press play on that video of Agnès Bisset and the fake PI. I wait until his face is exposed, press pause and take a screenshot. And then I forward it to Noah with the text message: Your wife is having me followed by this man.

  Seen.

  Silence.

  Answer.

  And then typing bubbles.

  They start. They stop. They start again.

  And then: Fuck. I knew she’d do something like this.

  Chapitre vingt-neuf

  Two hours later the sky
is the colour of denim and the leaves set against it are mustard and rust red. The bannister is cool beneath my hand as I head down the stairs, my eyes on the pale wood door of number twenty-three. An echo of the last time I was here moves through me – the vibration of drum and bass pushing through the walls, goosebumps on my arms, the piña coladas running through my veins – as I make my way down the stairs. And then I’m there, standing right where I stood when Noah found me last time and said, ‘Are you just going to stand there all night?’ As if by reflex, I glance up to the rooftop.

  There’s a rustle behind me and I swivel to look. I thought I made sure I wasn’t followed. I snuck out the back of work and got an Uber from a parallel street to be safe.

  But it’s nothing.

  There’s nobody there aside from an elderly woman watching me from her open window, pretending to water plants.

  I reach for my phone and text Noah: I’m here.

  And then my glance is drawn, as if magnetised, to that bottom segment of Rue Chappe. I remember standing there, looking for Khalid, seeing that white car speed away instead. A shiver runs through me: double A, that was the last part of the number plate.

  Was it Agnès’s guy in that car?

  Bzzzz.

  I push the door open and let it close heavy behind me. Click. I’m in the hallway now and I can see Noah’s studio door up ahead. I move past the metal door that leads to the rooftop and his door opens and there he is, looking like he always did: tanned and blue-eyed. Except now he’s wearing some old grey tracksuit pants with navy paint down one leg and a big white long-sleeved shirt. He looks drained. Greyscale.

  Like a man who’s been questioned by the police over a murder he didn’t commit.

  I move towards him. I can smell the muted peppermint of his shampoo.

  ‘Hey,’ I say, reaching out to touch his chest like I’m all trusting and vulnerable.

  ‘Don’t pull that cutesy crap with me,’ he says as he pushes the door open and moves aside so I can enter. ‘You lied to me.’

  ‘And you’ve never lied to me?’ I ask, as I move inside. It smells like oil paint and turpentine and old coffee, and it’s almost too big without all the people. A vast messy space with one of the sofas I saw last time now converted into an unmade bed.