1

The concierge cleared her throat before knocking, fixed her eyes on the Belle-Jardinière catalogue in her hand, and announced, ‘A letter for you, Mr Hire.’

She pulled her shawl tight across her chest. Somebody moved behind the brown door: first on the left, then on the right; first footsteps, then a muted rumpling of fabric and the clanking of pots; the concierge’s grey eyes seemed to penetrate the wood in pursuit of the invisible noise. At last it drew near. The key turned. A rectangle of light appeared, a carpet of yellow flowers, the marble of a washstand. A man held out his hand, but the concierge didn’t see it, or not clearly – in any case, she wasn’t paying attention. Her ferreting eyes had settled on another object: a towel soaked in blood, glaring deep red against the cold marble.

The door swung closed gently, of its own accord. The key turned again, and the concierge walked down the four flights of stairs, pausing now and then to think. She was thin; her clothes hung from her like a scarecrow’s rags from its skeleton of sticks. Her nose was damp, her eyelids red, her hands chapped from the cold.

On the other side of the glass-paned door to the concierge’s apartment, a young girl in flannel pyjamas stood in front of a chair with a shallow basin of water on it. Her brother, already dressed, was entertaining himself by splashing her; the table next to them had not been cleared.

Then came the distinct sound of the door opening. The boy turned around. The little girl exhibited a face drenched in tears.

‘What have we here … ?’

A slap for the boy, and his mother shoved him out the door.

‘You, off to school. And you, if you don’t stop crying …’

She grabbed the girl and got her into her dress, tugging on her arms like on a marionette’s. Then she hid the basin of soapy water in the cupboard, walked towards the door, turned around and walked back.

‘Have you finished whining?’

She was thinking, hesitating, her forehead creased, her small eyes worried. She nodded mechanically at the tenant from the second floor as he passed by in the hall; then all of a sudden, she threw on another shawl and hurried out on to the street, first turning down the flame on the stove.

It was freezing out. On the Fontainebleau road, which ran through Villejuif, the cars had slowed to a crawl because of the ice, their radiators exhaling steam. A hundred metres to the left was the main intersection, with a bistro on every corner, a policeman in the middle, busy streets stretching from the suburbs to the gates of Paris, trams, buses, cars. But on the right, two houses down, just past the last garage, it was already open road, the country – trees and fields white with frost.

The concierge shivered, hesitating again. She gestured weakly to a man standing on the corner, but he didn’t see her. She ran up to him and grabbed his arm.

‘Come with me.’

She returned to the house without looking to see if he was following, scooped her daughter up in one arm and sat her down on a chair in the corner to keep her out of the way.

‘Come in. Don’t stay there – he could see you.’

She was out of breath – or else very upset. Her gaze moved from the corridor to the man of thirty or so, who had kept his hat on his head.

‘Even yesterday I wasn’t sure, but I just saw something, and I would bet my life that it’s Mr Hire.’

‘Which one is he?’

‘A short man, on the fat side, with a curled moustache. He always carries a black briefcase under his arm.’

‘What’s he do?’

‘Nobody knows. He leaves in the morning and comes back in the evening. I brought his mail up to him and while the door was open, I noticed a towel soaked in blood …’

For two weeks now the detective, along with two colleagues, had been spending his days and sometimes his nights in the neighbourhood, keeping watch. He was beginning to know people by sight.

‘And apart from the towel …’ he began.

The concierge looked pained.

‘From the first day – it was Sunday, you remember – I’ve thought it could be him. They’d just found the woman in that empty plot. Your colleague questioned me along with all the other concierges. Well, Mr Hire didn’t go out that day! Which means he didn’t eat, because on Sundays he goes out and gets what he needs at the butcher’s on Rue Gambetta. That afternoon, he didn’t go anywhere. Listen … !’

They could hear footsteps in the stairwell. On the other side of the glass-paned door the corridor was dark, but they were still able to see a short man pass by with a briefcase under his left arm. At exactly the same moment the concierge and the detective leaned forwards and furrowed their brows; then the detective abruptly took off. He ran a few paces into the blue-green light of the street and returned, nonchalant.

‘He has a big bandage on his cheek.’

‘I saw.’

The concierge’s eyes were focused on some faraway place, more internal than external. ‘So, that’s not it,’ continued the detective, poised to leave.

But a feverish hand clung to his arm. The concierge was more and more distressed, if only from the effort she was making to remember.

‘Wait! I want to be sure … I was looking mostly at the hand towel and yet …’

She grimaced like a medium in full trance. Her voice became deep and slow. The little girl slid out of her chair.

‘I could swear that when I brought him the catalogue he wasn’t hurt. I didn’t get a good look at his face, but I did see him, and after all it seems to me that I would have noticed …’

She was still desperately racking her brains. The detective rumpled his brow.

‘Wait, I’ve got it! … He saw you looking at the towel, and he had the idea to …’

There in the concierge’s apartment, next to the table covered with a brown oilcloth, they fed each other’s suspicions. They were less than 200 metres away from the empty plot where, two weeks earlier on a Sunday morning, the corpse of a woman had been discovered, mutilated beyond recognition.

‘What time did he get back?’

‘At 7.10.’

To the right of the intersection, next to the tram stop, there was a row of market stalls. Mr Hire, briefcase under his arm, cleared a path as he waddled among the housewives. The stalls marched past: a butcher, then vegetables, then meat again, then one selling nothing but cauliflower. The tram conductor whistled, and Mr Hire began to run like somebody who isn’t used to running, like a woman, throwing his legs to the side. As he ran he hissed: ‘Pssst! … Pssst! …’

The conductor yanked him up by the arm just in time. Standing near the first car was a second detective, examining the crowd while slapping his hands against his sides to keep warm. When he saw Mr Hire’s bandage, his eyes narrowed, then grew very big. He threw a quick glance in the direction of the road and then, as the tram pulled away, leaped on to the running board.

They had found blood and traces of skin beneath the nails of the dead woman. In the absence of any other leads, they had noted on the report ‘be on the lookout especially for men with scratches on their faces’.

Mr Hire was sitting in the same seat he occupied every day, the one at the very back of the tram, his briefcase laid flat on his knees, reading the newspaper. Just like every other day, he had set aside his fare, which he held in his hand and offered to the conductor without so much as raising his eyes.

He was not fat. He was flabby. His volume was no greater than that of any ordinary man, but one sensed in him neither flesh nor bone, nothing but soft, flaccid matter, so soft and so flaccid that his movements were hard to make out.

Very red lips stood out from his orb-like face, as did the thin moustache that he curled with an iron but that looked as if it had been drawn on with India ink; on his cheekbones were the symmetrical pink dots of a doll’s cheeks.

He didn’t look around him. He didn’t know that a detective was watching him. At Porte d’Italie he got off the tram as if instinctively sensing that he’d arrived at his stop. He threaded his way once again through the crowd, hopping along, confident, his shoulders swaying, and descended the stairs to the Métro. There, on the edge of the platform, he went back to reading his paper.

He read as he entered the train carriage the moment it stopped in front of him; he read during the whole ride, standing in a corner; read as he transferred lines at République and finally exited at Voltaire station.

The detective was still following him, without conviction. Still, it was no worse than being stuck at the intersection at Villejuif.

Mr Hire took Rue Saint-Maur, turned left and squeezed his way into a courtyard littered with casks. At the far end of it, he disappeared.

It was an old courtyard, an old building. Enamel name-plates advertised a barrel maker, a carpenter and a printer. There were the sounds of a saw and of a printing press. The detective did not see a concierge and stood for a moment on the pavement, hesitant. He was struck by a reddish glint on the paving stones. Turning around, he noticed that the barred windows, level with the ground, were illuminated, and in the same instant he caught a glimpse of Mr Hire removing his overcoat and his scarf, hanging them up in a wardrobe, and advancing towards a white wooden table.

It was not quite a basement, not quite the ground floor. The courtyard was sunken, and the room in which Mr Hire was working was a metre below ground level. It made for a comical effect, with Mr Hire cut off at the waist by the pavement. The ceiling was bare except for a dingy naked light bulb, which produced a yellowish glow. Nothing could be heard of what was happening inside.

Mr Hire was calm and serene. Seated in front of a pile of letters, he opened them one by one, carefully, with the help of a letter opener. He did not read them but sorted them instead; to his left he placed the actual letters, and to his right the postal orders that were inside each envelope. He did not smoke. Twice, he rose to add coal to a small heating stove.

The detective took a turn around the courtyard in search of a concierge, but the printer told him there wasn’t one. When he returned to the pavement Mr Hire, behind his barred window directly below, was wrapping packages with precise movements. But then every package was exactly the same.

Mr Hire would take a wooden box from one stack, a printed form from another and finally six postcards drawn from six different piles; with a flick of the wrist, he would wrap them all together and tie the package up with a piece of red string from a ball dangling near his head.

The policeman went off to drink a couple of rums at the bistro. When he returned, approximately twenty packages had been completed. By midday, there were sixty.

Mr Hire slowly put on his overcoat and scarf. He materialized on the pavement and headed towards a restaurant on Boulevard Voltaire, where he settled in like a regular. He read his newspaper as he ate.

At two o’clock, he went back to making packages. At 3.30, he was copying addresses on to labels; when it was about four o’clock, he began to glue them on.

Then he bundled all the small packages into one large one and at exactly five o’clock entered the post office. He waited his turn at the window marked REGISTERED MAIL.

The clerk didn’t even bother to weigh the packages. He could have done it in his sleep. Mr Hire paid up and departed, with only his briefcase left to carry. The detective was getting restless. Because of the cold, he had drunk nine or ten glasses of rum since morning.

But Mr Hire was still not finished. With the same mechanical precision, he got on a bus, got off at the offices of Le Matin and held out a piece of paper and thirty francs to the employee in charge of classified ads, who didn’t even read it, doubtlessly having already seen it many times.

The boulevards were emptier than usual. People were huddled in small groups around the braziers. The asphalt was white from the frost. Mr Hire swayed as he walked, not noticing the women who brushed against him. He turned on to Rue Richelieu, entered the offices of Le Journal and delivered a form and thirty francs to the classifieds window.

The detective had had enough. At the risk of losing his man, he hurried to the window as soon as Mr Hire had left it and flashed his identification.

‘Show me the ad.’

The clerk coolly handed it over. The text was written in an elegant script.

Eighty to a hundred francs a day for easy work without quitting your job. Write to: Mr Hire, 67, Rue Saint-Maur, Paris.

The two men met again at the entrance to Bourse Métro and descended, one behind the other. One still behind the other, they emerged from underground at Porte d’Italie. Mr Hire was reading the evening paper. The detective looked on spitefully.

On the tram, they sat side by side. It was 7.05 when Mr Hire stepped off at the Villejuif terminal and walked home, innocent for all the world.

The detective went in after him, pushed open the door to the concierge’s and grumbled in response to the greeting of his colleague, who was drinking a bowl of hot coffee.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘And you?’

The boy was doing his homework at a corner of the table.

The room was poorly lit. The postman had just left a stack of circulars on the oilcloth, next to the blue enamel coffee pot.

‘Mr Hire?’

‘You too?’

The concierge looked from one to the other, her features painfully drawn.

‘You think it’s him, don’t you? My God …’

She was about to cry. She cried. They were only nervous tears, but her skinny hands trembled.

‘I’m afraid … Don’t leave … For two weeks I’ve been scared to death.’

Her son watched her from behind his notebook. The girl was sitting on the floor.

‘A cup of coffee?’ suggested the detective who had been there longer.

He poured one for his friend.

‘What set you on the trail?’

‘The cut … And then there’s his profession … He’s one of those guys who promise God knows how much per day for easy work and then, for fifty or sixty francs, send out watercolour sets worth twenty, with five or six postcards to colour in …’

The concierge was disappointed. The first detective, now standing, filled the room with his bulk.

‘Apparently there’s a bloody towel of some sort. What I would like to know is, was he really hurt?’

They didn’t know what to do. The first one poured himself some more coffee.

‘Now I’m afraid to run into him on the stairs!’ cried the concierge. ‘I’ve always been scared of him. Everyone’s scared!’

‘He doesn’t go out?’

‘Only on Sundays. I think he goes to the cinema.’

‘No one comes to see him?’

‘No one.’

‘And who does the housework?’

‘He does. I’ve never been inside his apartment. The catalogue this morning must have been sent by accident, because it was the first time, and I wanted to take the opportunity to have a look. I called through the door that he had a letter …’

The two men looked at each other awkwardly.

‘You have to do something, arrest him, I don’t know. But I can’t live any longer with the thought that … I mean, when he walks by he likes to stroke my daughter’s head. Well, it frightens me, what if—’

Now she was crying for real, without wiping her eyes because she was adding coal to the stove. They could hear the rumble of cars passing on the road, and more distant sounds from the tram. It was warm, but their feet were frozen.

‘If we went up there under some pretext?’

They were ill at ease.

‘It might be better to make him come down. Go and tell him that somebody wants to speak with him.’

‘Me? Never! No, never!’

She was trembling, crying without conviction, in little bursts.

‘I don’t even have a husband to protect me. At night here, everything is dead quiet, except for the cars speeding by …’

She pulled her daughter to her feet in a single movement.

‘Sit in a chair.’

‘Are you sure that he didn’t have that cut in the morning?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I could swear he didn’t. I’ve been thinking about it all day, so much that my head aches.’

‘Well, partner, should we go up?’

They didn’t have to. Someone was coming down the stairs. The concierge pricked up her ears, before rushing towards the door and opening it.

‘Mr Hire!’

She was shaking, hiding behind the open door, staring at the two men as if to say, ‘It’s up to you, now.’

‘Sorry …’

Mr Hire excused himself, hesitated on the threshold, then took two steps forwards, looking confused and embarrassed.

‘What is it? Is there … ?’

He couldn’t see the concierge, who was concealed by the door. The detectives nudged each other. The little girl burst into tears as she watched.

‘Someone called me?’

‘It’s lucky you were passing by. My cousin tells me you’re injured …’

It was the first detective who leaped in. He was pale, swallowing as he spoke.

‘I work at the hospital … I’m an attendant, and …’

And to get it over with, he stretched out a clumsy, brutish hand, grabbed hold of the bandage and jerked it off. They were all on top of each other in the narrow room. The little girl started crying even louder.

Mr Hire held his hand to his cheek; it came away covered in blood. Blood had already run down on to his collar, his shoulder. It gushed out, thin and red, while the edges of the wound spread wider and wider under the pressure of his fingers.

‘What the—’

The concierge was clasping her hands together hard enough to break them. The detective started to panic when he saw the fresh, clean shaving cut.

‘Excuse me … I …’

He looked for the tap, a towel, anything to stop the blood, to make it end. Mr Hire’s eyes were perfectly round, with brown irises. He looked at each of the occupants of the room, one by one, without knowing better than any of them what to do to stop the flow of blood, now dripping in fat drops on to the cement floor.

The boy was still in his same spot, pen in air, notebook in front of him. His sister was rolling around on the floor.

‘It’s … it’s a mistake … if you would allow me to try to help …’

Blood stained Mr Hire’s cheek and flowed down his chin; he looked disfigured, as if his mouth had been hacked open. He was distraught. The pink dots had vanished from his cheeks.

‘Thank you.’

He still seemed to be excusing himself, like a polite guest who has accidently made a mess in his host’s house. He stumbled into the doorframe.

‘Stay a minute … I’ll …’

The detective had found a kitchen towel and offered it.

‘Thank you … thank you … sorry …’

He had already squeezed his way out into the cold darkness of the corridor and could be heard climbing back up to his apartment, heavy and hesitant. It seemed as if they could almost hear the drops of blood falling on the stairs.

‘Shut up!’ the concierge yelled suddenly at her daughter, slapping her across the face.

Her hair was a mess; she looked lost. She shook her son.

‘And you, sitting there not saying a word!’

The detectives didn’t know what to do with themselves.

‘Keep calm. By tomorrow morning, the superintendent—’

‘You think I’m going to spend the night all alone here? That’s what you think?’

She was about to have an attack. It was seconds away. Nausea overwhelmed her as her hand accidentally encountered a splatter of blood on the table.

‘We’ll stay. That is, one of us will …’

She no longer knew if she would be able to hold herself together. She looked at them; they tried to appear firm.

‘You go and make the report.’

The water had been boiling for a quarter of an hour. The windows were coated with steam.

‘But you’ll be back, right?’

The concierge removed the kettle, stirred the red coals with the end of the poker.

‘I haven’t been able to sleep for two weeks,’ she said to conclude. ‘You see now. I’m not crazy …’