Vincennes
PAUL ESCORTS ME FROM HIS office across the wide, cobbled courtyard. He nods to the security guard as we pass through the gates then stops abruptly, extending his hand.
‘I hope that’s answered your questions,’ he says, as though we’d just been discussing economics. He shakes my hand as if pushing me away.
When I reach the corner, I glance back. He’s there on his phone, watching me.
Entering the metro, my phone beeps with a message:
I know what he was working on. Meet me at the café opposite Vincennes this afternoon 14.30.
The text is from the number I found in my father’s files with the name, Mari. I hadn’t had a response since sending the message three days ago, but the timing is bizarre, as if the sender has just seen me say goodbye to Paul.
Who is this?
I text back, but the message fails. I try to call, but there’s no answer.
People swirl around me on the platform. Most are on their phones, and I search their faces, wondering if it’s someone close by.
It’s already 2 o’clock, and the limited service on the metro means I can’t change trains in case I’m followed, so I just swap carriages a few times. My phone’s on, and I know I can be tracked, but I don’t care now.
The café is on the edge of a park, opposite a fairground, and there’s a relaxed, out-of-town feel with music and carnival rides rising above the fence. The terrace is crowded with people finishing their lunch and enjoying the afternoon sun. I scan the tables. Only one person sits alone, absorbed in his phone. He looks familiar, and I linger nearby. Mari could be a man, Marion. But he ignores me, so I move into the café, taking a seat near the window with a view across the road.
A dark-haired woman follows me inside. Careful make-up so I can’t tell her age, but I guess around fifty, and she’s dressed neatly in a skirt and a black sweater.
‘Hello, Alex,’ she says quietly, glancing behind her. ‘Do you mind if we sit further back?’ she adds, and I follow her into the shadows.
She arranges her seat so it’s facing the door and sits with her handbag on her lap. ‘We met very briefly a long time ago. You won’t remember.’
I shake my head. ‘Were you a friend of my father’s?’
‘Not exactly a friend, but I knew him well.’
We place our orders with the waiter then she reaches into her bag and pushes a USB stick across the table. ‘This contains all of the information I gave your father, and to Patrick.’
A chill slides in beside the stick, and I stare at her small, pale hand cupped over it like a croupier’s over dice. She fixes me with a stern look, her mouth downcast. ‘I sent it to them separately. To your father about a month before he died, then to Patrick earlier this year.’
I sit back, considering the implications of this.
‘You need to be careful, Alex,’ she says, as the waiter appears with our drinks. When he’s gone, she speaks quickly, glancing past me towards the door as she stirs her coffee. There are white animal hairs on the sleeve of her sweater, a contrast to her otherwise controlled appearance.
‘What’s it about?’ I ask.
‘It’s all on the stick. Some of it is explicit, I have to warn you. Hidden cameras, you’ll see.’
‘Cameras?’
‘They had a camera across the road from the club in Montparnasse. There’s old footage of your father. He was looking into that old material and that’s what led him to me. At first, I gave him some photos I’d found of him and others, taken at the club – he didn’t know. The newer material is more financial – plans for the development of the properties they’re buying up in Aubervilliers, Bobigny, Montreuil and La Courneuve. Details of the offshore ownership, the directors and the prospectus for the Issy site. The background’s all there.’
‘Wait, wait,’ I say, confused by the sudden rush of information. ‘What is this?’
‘I work for Ligne Rouge. It’s a massive development in the suburbs,’ she says, pointing at the stick that lies between us. She stops abruptly and checks her phone, and then scans the restaurant again as if she’s not sure which holds the greatest threat. Her constant agitation fuels my paranoia, and the hairs stand up on my neck as though someone’s right behind me.
‘So what’s the connection between all this and my father?’
‘Eddy was investigating the activities of the company I work for. I’d been worried about it for years, but did nothing. It was only after Eddy got involved that I realised the full extent of it.’
A couple enters the restaurant, taking a seat nearby. She finishes her espresso and gets up to leave.
‘No, wait,’ I say, grabbing her wrist. ‘Please. You’re the first person I’ve met who can tell me what’s going on.’
‘It’s all there,’ she says, pushing the stick towards me. ‘The hidden structure and ownership. I set the companies up through a network of trusts and offshore shell companies. In the beginning, I thought everything was above board, nothing out of the ordinary. Please – I need to leave.’
I look at the stick and then at her. ‘Someone connected to all this killed my father?’ I ask.
She pulls on her jacket, anxious now. ‘I believe so.’
‘And prompted Patrick to do what? Kill himself?’
She shakes her head impatiently, and then looks at me sadly. ‘Of course he didn’t kill himself.’
Everything fades as the certainty in her voice sinks in.
‘What are you saying? How do you know?’ I say, suddenly angry at her evasiveness and these half-explanations. ‘Why did you give all this is to Eddy and Patrick? Why endanger their lives? And why are you giving it to me?’
‘Someone needs to do something.’
‘Why not go to the police? Since when did journalists become stand-in cops, on-call to investigate and mete out justice when other avenues had failed?’
‘The authorities aren’t interested, and besides, it could get me into much more trouble. Passing on this information is a breach of my duties, possibly even theft. I’m not supposed to do this.’
‘But if it’s illegal—’
‘I didn’t say it was illegal.’
I stare into her dark eyes. Her nervousness and the animal hairs on her sleeve make me queasy, and I feel like I’m sliding downhill fast. What if she’s some madwoman – obsessed with a conspiracy theory, or some disgruntled employee who convinced my father to settle her scores?
I sit back, the possibilities swirling through my head, leaving a confused fog in their wake.
‘And you, why are you still there? At this company?’
She laughs. ‘I know too much. I can’t leave.’
‘Why not? Do they keep you chained to the desk?’ I scan her clothes, discreet jewellery and expensive handbag. ‘Or do they pay you too much?’
She looks at me, offended. ‘As long as I’m there, I’m useful. If I leave, I’m a liability. You’ll understand once you see it all. I can’t explain here.’
She pays the bill and takes her bag as I reach forward and put the stick in my pocket.
She draws her coat around her. ‘There’s an old saying. If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will come floating by. Well, I’ve been waiting a long time, and the river just keeps getting wider, with no sign of them. No one believed me, except your father and Patrick. None of us can wait any longer.’
*
She leaves the café, and I follow her to the metro where she heads north. Using the skills I’d learned from Sami, I drop back, keeping distance between us. She stops several times to check her phone and look around, but she doesn’t see me. Her nervousness is infectious, and as people crowd onto the carriage, I get the feeling someone’s now following me. I keep my hand over the stick in my pocket, desperate to get home and see what’s on it.
The trains are still disrupted and I lose her in the crowds changing lines at the Gare du Nord. There’s still no transport beyond the Péri, so I get off at La Villette and walk north along the slow-moving canal, scanning the tow path up ahead. Flat, grey water laps the muddy banks where rubbish is scattered in amongst pale weeds. My eyes are drawn to an area of swirling bubbles that signal the decomposition of something beneath the water.
I head into the wind as it strengthens and skims a chill from the canal. There’s a bend up ahead where the path enters a tunnel beneath the Péri, and the roar of traffic drowns out the seagulls squawking overhead. Exiting the tunnel, I pass a row of storage depots, then a large, boarded-up supermarket. Behind a high fence, the wind clatters loose metal in a scrapyard. Finally, a path signed AUBERVILLIERS leads away from the canal through a maze of suburban streets and bungalows.
I’m not far from my block when I sense it coming like a change of atmosphere – the gust of wind that arrives before rain, or the blue light of a snowstorm, everything sharpening and coming into focus. The noise is behind me yet the blow comes from in front as a car door opens, slamming my knees. There’s a scuffle of footsteps as someone grabs me from behind, arms tight around my shoulders. The first punch hits me like a sledgehammer – whiplash and shockwaves of light. I catch a glimpse of a face to the side – short, dark hair. There’s blood in my nose, flowing over my lips, dripping down the car door, stark against the white paintwork. A dazed sluggishness overcomes me as the pain balloons, and I’m thinking, Is this an accident? Have I walked into someone’s door? but then he peppers my kidneys with sharp, knuckly jabs. He hauls me upright, slings a rough cloth over my head. There are prickles of light, a cord around my neck.
Someone else punches me below the ribs and burning pain sends me staggering backwards. He puts his whole body behind the fist, breath hissing through his teeth. I’m doubled over, can’t breathe. There are voices behind me, then the fighter pulls me up, frogmarches me forward as I suck in shallow breaths. His knees in the backs of mine, arms round me like bars. I lose my balance, tripping sideways onto the car. Grunts and that sick, close smell of sweat and fear.
I’m lifted, and then I fall, tumbling into the boot. There’s pain down my side and everything moves slowly, like a machine shutting down. My head hits something sharp, exploding with agony as the door slams.
Now it’s dark, and I’m shaking, knees drawn in. Blood fills my mouth and panic bubbles up from deep inside as warm piss soaks my jeans.
We drive fast for a while then the car slows, stalling over speed bumps, bouncing, my hands fumbling for something to hold. Muffled sounds come through the partition. I can’t make out the words, just the hum of raised voices, and the quick rat-a-tat of an argument. Finally, the car stops and two doors slam. Then the boot opens. I feel a rush of cold air, specks of light through the sack. Traffic noise nearby and I’m pulled out of the boot and in through a doorway where something sharp hits my side. There’s a strong smell of sweat, sour and animal, like wet leather, mixed with the chemical reek of bleach.
‘This way,’ a man says, taking the bag from my head.
I keep my eyes down. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t let them see you seeing them.
We’re in a warehouse. There’s a boxing ring on a raised platform in the corner, the floor padded with dark blue mats. About ten punch bags hang from wooden beams on chains and twisted ropes. Shafts of dusty light hit the mats, and birds flutter against the skylights above.
The one holding me ties a blindfold over my eyes.
‘Take your clothes off,’ another says, kicking the backs of my knees.
My legs buckle and I fall down, sprawling on all fours. I take off my sweatshirt, exposing my burning skin, the eczema alive with itches as I peel off my trainers and socks. I edge my pissy jeans down one leg, then the other, trying to think. My keys and belt jangle as someone goes through my clothes.
‘Just take the wallet, the cards. The pin—’ I say.
‘Shut up,’ one of them says, kicking my ribs.
He rifles through my pockets, and then presses something into my cheek. It’s the USB stick.
‘Look what I’ve found,’ he says, twisting the stick hard into my cheek.
They speak among themselves, arguing about what to do. Someone drags me across a concrete floor. A door opens, and there’s the smell of stale beer, cigarettes and bleach.
Downstairs the air is cooler, the floor gritty beneath my feet. Sounds echo all around and I stumble, falling onto a soft plastic mat. It’s sticky and has an overpowering smell – sour again, like a wet dog.
There are others here now – two, maybe three more. One squeezes my neck, thumbs in my windpipe until my head throbs. Darkness then circling lights. The man releases me, and I fall back, gasping.
‘Not like that, you idiot. We’re not supposed to kill him,’ one of them says, his voice slurred. ‘Here, take this.’
‘No, you do it. I don’t know how.’
‘Like this. Just take it. Hold it.’ This new voice is angry now.
Then sick laughter. ‘We could just say it was a mistake.’
The one in charge throws me face down and kneels on my back. There’s a sharp sting inside my elbow and something warm moves up my arm – heavy and numb, like lead.
He flips me round. ‘Stop sticking your nose where it’s not wanted,’ he slurs, before punching me in the face.
There’s a rush of blood and my brain contracts, shrinking away from the sides of my skull, curling in around the edges like an oyster rippling away from its shell when doused in lemon juice.
Then I fall, down deeply, into the black.