Paris Noir [Anthology]

by Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

  ‘Have a drink with me? Just to put yourself in the firing line.’

  Zaraoui ignored him and ordered a coffee. Reyer pointed to the barman, signifying that once again he’d leave Zaraoui to do the questioning. The barman hadn’t forgotten his recent tragedy. Four cyclists on the terrace, he serves them four diabolos, one collapses - dead. He brought down the table and the drinks in his fall. People were talking about the quality of the lemonade and the clientele. ‘Could an ill-intentioned person have slipped something nasty into Garnier’s glass.’ The barman didn’t think so. He hadn’t spotted any odd-looking customers. And besides, most people were avidly watching the sports coverage on the TV. Reyer asked him for his ID and made a note of his name and address. He downed his champagne in two gulps and went out to make a call. He ran into Lieutenant Corinne Moutin and asked her to check whether the barman had a record. He spied what he was looking for on the other side of the square.

  He walked into the Pluie de Mots bookstore, strode over to the assistant and flashed his ID.

  ‘I need to check something in a dictionary.’

  ‘I’d have lent you one even if you hadn’t been a cop,’ replied the assistant with a half smile.

  He pointed to a shelf. Reyer opted for the illustrated Larousse and looked up ‘ataraxy’. The definition made him raise one eyebrow, then the other: ‘a state of freedom from emotional disturbance and anxiety; tranquillity’. He dumped the dictionary on top of a pile of The Da Vinci Code. Moutin called as he was walking back across the square.

  Zaraoui was leaning against the car bonnet, arms folded, his expression neutral. A state of freedom from emotional disturbance and anxiety, thought Reyer. Then he thought of Marthe’s hands. Her slender fingers covered in silver rings. Reyer had never seen so many rings on such tiny hands. Marthe knew some awesome words too. Words she had no need to control. They did everything she asked, without jumping about all over the place. Reyer got into the car and waited for Zaraoui to slide behind the wheel.

  ‘The barman’s clean,’ he said. ‘Moutin just called me.’

  Zaraoui headed towards Bastille and rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine. He parked in front of the driveway of a furniture shop. Reyer gazed blankly at the window. A guy came out and offered him a sofa at a special discount. Reyer thrust the bust of the Republic under his nose and then followed Zaraoui into the courtyard of the Étoile d’Or. They stepped into a haven of greenery. There was a mass of container plants and also trees planted in the ground, Virginia creeper, clematis, honeysuckle.

  ‘For a guy with no ambition, he didn’t do too badly,’ remarked Reyer.

  Gamier had lived in a two-room ground-floor apartment, probably a renovated workshop. A woman with short, dark hair was sitting on the steps waiting. She looked as if she had her head in the clouds, but soon realised they were policemen.

  ‘Nothing’s happened to Guillaume, has it?’

  It was Zaraoui who broke the bad news. She started to cry. Reyer bit his lip. He hated seeing people cry. He didn’t like seeing them roar with laughter either. Fact was, he didn’t like emotional excesses of any kind, he felt they were viruses with the power to infect you and turn you into a limp rag. In an effort to control himself, he peered through the window into the deceased’s home. Clean, tidy, well furnished, at least if you like pretentious modern furniture. He left Zaraoui to calm the girl down and went to sniff around the courtyard. Nothing ugly there. The din of the traffic was no more than a purr. To think some people could treat themselves to peace and quiet bang in the centre of Paris. Reyer thought fleetingly of his two-room apartment in the crummiest block in rue de Montreuil. Above a supermarket. Ugly but practical. You can’t complain the whole time. He assessed the situation. The girl had stopped blubbing. She was chatting, Zaraoui by her side.

  ‘Trapezius, infraspinous, masseter, gastrocnemius, semi-tendinous, brachioradialis, sartorius, he knew them all. I was impressed by that. And he was funny too.’

  Zaraoui turned to Reyer and explained that the young woman was a masseuse who lived in the same apartment block as Gamier. He pointed to a copper plate half hidden by the Virginia creeper. ‘Clara and Alexandre Lorieux, physiotherapists’.

  ‘I found out later he’d only begun studying medicine to please his father. Then he dropped out of uni and got a job with Sportitude. But he hadn’t forgotten the names of the muscles, tendons, bones and joints, articulations, the . . .’

  This girl’s going to spill over with words, thought Reyer, swallowing his saliva. And they’re going to infect me. Perhaps I should give her a mammoth slap, start her crying again. Tears aren’t so bad. Luckily. Zaraoui interrupted her verbal diarrhoea.

  ‘How long had you been his mistress?’

  ‘Two years. We’d decided to tell my husband. You see, I’ve travelled a lot with Alexandre, from India to Yemen, from Thailand to Mexico, from Burma . . .’

  For pity’s sake, cut it short, girl, because otherwise that mammoth thrashing will be inevitable and the consequences incalculable. Reyer’s eye was drawn to the courtyard entrance. The TV crew had turned up.

  ‘. . . from Burkina Faso to Komodo Island. But to be honest, I travelled further with Guillaume just staying put in Paris.’

  ‘We’re going up,’ commanded Reyer.

  They pushed Clara towards the staircase. It was a communal area, but the Lorieux had generously decided to share their travels with their neighbours; the walls of the narrow staircase were plastered with photos of a trip to India. The apartment wasn’t exactly spacious, crammed with potted plants, and the exotic photos continued over the pastel walls. Reyer concluded that Clara’s husband needed to feel he was somewhere else even when he was there. He had probably never heard of ataraxy, he thought, wandering over to the window. The TV crew were pestering a neighbour. The sound engineer was waving his mammoth-hair-covered mic above his head; his hair was tousled as if he’d just got out of bed. Which he probably had. It was all right for some, living in apartments surrounded by greenery and pretty flowers and doing nothing much with their mornings.

  Meanwhile, Clara had started wittering on again. Reyer tried to catch Zaraoui’s attention to convey that it would be better to focus on Clara’s voice, rather than listen to her rabbiting. But Zaraoui was absorbed in her gibberish. He didn’t miss a single word as it cascaded out of the physio onto the rug, Reyer watched the words bounce off the walls, windows and ceilings like transparent jelly creatures. Jelly that could go on bouncing ad infinitum with no need of an energy source. Reyer rushed off to find the bathroom to carry out his vital cold-water ablutions and his little breathing routine. He was amazed to find a shrub the size of a man filling almost the entire bathroom, its branches spreading into the tub. He pictured himself on a beach with Marche. She was wearing nothing but a sari and was emerging from the water smiling. The pink fabric embroidered with gold thread hugged every single one of her curves. Reyer heard the entryphone buzzer and went back to the sitting room.

  ‘Don’t answer, it’s the TV people,’ Zaraoui told Clara.

  The girl had finished jabbering. Reyer said to himself that a woman so desperate to talk was capable of making anonymous phone calls. It would be right up her street. He went over to the entryphone.

  ‘If you don’t confess, I’m going to answer it!’ he barked. ‘The TV lot will rake over every aspect of your life. Then you can say goodbye to your business, you’ll have to practise elsewhere. Bye-bye green oasis in the middle of Paris.’

  ‘But I didn’t kill Guillaume. I loved him!’

  ‘That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean the anonymous phone call. If that dishevelled-looking guy has just given your name to the muck-rakers, it’s because he knew you were sleeping with Gamier. The whole building probably knows. And your physio husband too.’

  Flashes of inspiration were a lot more interesting than the aftermath, so Reyer let Zaraoui add the finishing touches. He searched the bar, found a bottle of rum and took a few swigs from the bottle. He spotte
d the telephone, dialled Marthe’s number and listened to the message on her answering machine, so professional but so electrifying. This shrink would have no chance in the anonymous phone call business; there was no mistaking her siren voice. He hung up, wiped his damp hand on his shirt and pricked up his ears. Zaraoui was painstakingly preparing the ground. Clara had seen Gamier collapse on the café terrace. For the simple reason that she’d been nearby. Gamier had told her he’d be taking a break at Café Mirage during the morning. He liked playing that kind of game. Arranging to meet her in places he went to with his mates. Exchanging secret looks. She’d been sitting on the terrace, she’d seen him raise his glass to his lips and collapse before he’d even drunk a drop.

  ‘Why do you think it’s murder?’ asked Zaraoui.

  ‘This morning, Guillaume took his bike out of the garage and left it in the courtyard for a minute while he popped back upstairs to phone me. He always took his water bottle filled with an energy drink.’

  ‘Phone you, why?’

  ‘Just to tell me he loved me . . .’

  That set off the waterworks again. Clara wept, sobbed. Reyer let her cry, then asked, between hiccups, where the husband was. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The water bottle on the bike. Where’s the bike?’

  ‘Probably at the station,’ replied Zaraoui. ‘Garnier’s friends parked it in the corridor with theirs. You don’t leave expensive machines like that out on the street.’

  Reyer called the station. They kept him hanging on. A duty officer said he’d find out about the bike. And informed him it had gone. Reyer asked to speak to his chief. The chief passed the matter on to his team. The chief’s secretary eventually remembered a tall, thin, fair-haired man. He’d calmly walked out with the bike, it hadn’t occurred to her that he might be stealing it. The description matched that of Alexandre Lorieux. Reyer took another swig of rum and reflected on the situation. The number of cyclists in Paris was at its peak during the Tour de France. Might as well try to find a minuscule needle in a colossal haystack. He watched the muck-rakers through the window. They’d let the dishevelled guy go and were hassling another guy. A tall, fair-haired man, the beanpole type, standing beside a bicycle. Looking distraught. Reyer raced down the stairs, bottle of rum in hand. He wielded it like a sabre to threaten the journalists, then sent it flying over the ancient cobblestones. The cameraman filmed him. The sound engineer swung his mammoth-hair device in his direction. Reyer gave the journalist a pithecanthropine clout, grabbed Clara’s husband’s arm and marched him up the stairs, pronto. The physio wouldn’t let go of the bike. Getting up the stairs was a struggle.

  Lorieux admitted he’d poisoned Gamier with a shrub brought back from India which was flourishing in his bathroom. It was a magic tree that killed and left no trace. Thousands of Indian wives had found that out to their cost when their husbands had tired of them.

  That evening, Reyer hammered on a familiar door in the Canal Saint-Martin district. She opened the door, calm, smiling, wearing a simple tight-fitting T-shirt and a ridiculous little pair of trousers which were too short. He explained that he’d solved a case in a matter of hours but his chief had suspended him all the same for assaulting a bunch of journalists. He needed an emergency consultation. He knew it was 9.46 p.m., but anxiety was quick to spread over ravaged terrain.

  ‘I’m an ataraxic cop,’ said Reyer sitting down facing Marthe.

  That’s a good opener, he thought. With words like that, I might just interest her, surprise her. A surprised woman is always a good thing. After all, that poor sod Gamier managed to surprise little Clara with muscle names. Gastrocnemius is over the top, biceps femoris, I’m losing it, you’re my Achilles heel, my trapezius balance, my brachioradialis muscles want to enfold you, my pectorals marry you . . .

  ‘Sorry?’ said Marthe in her melodious voice.

  Be still my words, whoa, whoa, slow down my horses running before the cart, it’s to her I must offer you, to her alone, and to her body that could help me so much . . .

  ‘An ataraxic cop. From ataraxy, tranquillity of the soul. But not just any tranquillity, Marthe. Absolute tranquillity.’

  Translation © Ros Schwartz and Lulu Norman

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  * * * *

  ELLE ET MOI: LE SACRIFICE

  JAKE LAMAR

  S

  . has changed her hairstyle. It happened during the rentrée. Before, her chestnut brown mane had hung loosely, girlishly, about shoulder-length. Now she wears it quite short, swept away from her forehead, with a little upward flip at the bottom. It has an early 1960s look about it, this hairdo - and it accentuates her long, porcelain throat. She is no more and no less beautiful to me than before. In fact, S. is not really beautiful at all. But there is a great beauty about her, as Georges Guétary once said of Leslie Caron.

  Anyway, I am devoted to her whatever she does with her hair. Because we are meant to be together. I know this. I’m serious: I know it. Like you know you’re you when you look in the mirror. I look at S. and know what our destiny is. And she looks right through me.

  Maman mocks me, tells me I have no chance. I hadn’t told her my concept of destiny with S. All I said was that I thought S. could be interested in me. Someday.

  ‘That’s your medication talking,’ Maman sneered. ‘Do you really think she’d be interested in a mental case?’

  This is what Maman always says when she wants to hurt me. But I know I am not a mental case. I was a troubled young man, yes. But I’m OK now. I am completely lucid. And Maman knows I’m not crazy. She wouldn’t call me a mental case if she thought I really was still sick. She says it now just to humiliate me, to rub my nose in the stinking shit of my past.

  Besides, Maman doesn’t want me to have any women in my life. She wants me all to herself. She always has. Maybe that was my problem, eh? I’d like to have this all out with her, hold the mirror up to Maman. But I never do. I will, though. Someday. When I can afford my own apartment.

  Maman and I live together in the same dreary flat in a characterless street in the fifteenth arrondissement. This is the apartment in which I grew up, the only home I have ever known; the apartment in which my father died, four years ago, back when I was a mental case, living in a hospital among other mental cases. Every once in a while, Maman tries to make me feel responsible, as if my psychiatric condition caused Papa’s heart attack. But she dare not harass me too much about that. Because we both know the truth. Maman always said this place was too small for three people. She lived alone with Papa during my first two years in the hospital. She lived completely alone, after my father’s death, for two years. She has now lived alone with me for two years and she definitely prefers me to utter solitude, as well as to Papa. She always preferred me to Papa. Would always rather touch me than touch Papa.

  But we don’t talk about that.

  I need to get my own place, some place where S. and I could be alone. Maman is wrong. I plan to tell S. everything about my past. And I am certain she will understand. She wouldn’t coddle me, wouldn’t excuse the errors of my youth. She would be firm yet compassionate. Who knows? It might even make me more interesting to her. Hey, I’m not just a twenty-four-year-old computer geek. I’m a twenty-four-year-old computer geek who spent four years in a mental hospital! I’m sure S. would begin to see my time in there the way I do. Some young people spend four years at university. Some spend four years in the military. I spent those formative years of eighteen to twenty-two in a nuthouse. This was my sentimental education.

  * * * *

  The guys at work needle me for what they call my ‘crush’ on S. Not that I talk to them about it. Not really. But I have occasionally spoken about her to my colleagues, four computer geeks who - except for the fact that none of them ever spent four years in a mental hospital - are pretty much just like me. They don’t know I was hospitalised. They just think I spent four years jerking off, watching TV, reading sci-fi novels, surfing the Internet and playing video games while
collecting unemployment hand-outs and sponging off my parents. That’s what a couple of them did for four years after high school. For me to think I might have a chance with S. (yes, it must be obvious, even without my explicitly stating it) I’m conveying to my colleagues that I consider myself somehow superior to them. So they must relentlessly take the piss out of me, try to cut me down to their size. Of course, I do consider myself superior to them. I don’t tell them that. Just as I don’t tell them that it is my destiny to be with S. Not a ‘crush’. Destiny.

  My colleagues suffer from a common form of self-disgust. After all, we’re just five losers working in a computer repair service centre. We make very little money. We know we’re smart but it’s not like any of us got into one of the grandes écoles. We’re neither handsome nor charming. How dare I consider myself superior to any of them? Especially in terms of attractiveness to any woman, let alone a woman like S. My four colleagues and I, it must be said, are able to occupy a level field of sexual conquest. This is another source of their feelings of intra-office egalitarianism. We have all partaken of the Nerd Girl.