Central Park

by Guillaume Musso

  Gabriel pushed open the door, and Alice followed him through a gloomy corridor that opened out into a large, dimly lit, windowless room filled with the lingering odor of stale sweat.

  All kinds of different objects were piled up on rows of metal shelves: flat-screen televisions, designer purses, musical instruments, stuffed animals, abstract paintings.

  “Give me your watch,” Gabriel said, holding out his hand.

  Cornered now, Alice hesitated. When her husband died, she had—probably too quickly—gotten rid of everything that reminded her of the man she had loved so much: clothes, books, furniture. All that she had left of him was this watch, a Patek Philippe in rose gold with a perpetual calendar and moon phases. Paul had inherited it from his grandfather.

  Over time, the watch had become a sort of talisman, a link that connected her to the memory of Paul. Alice wore it every day, repeating each morning the gestures her husband used to make: fastening the leather strap around her wrist, winding the watch, cleaning its face. The object calmed her and made her feel as if Paul were still with her, somewhere—an artificial feeling, admittedly, but a reassuring one.

  “Please,” Gabriel insisted.

  They walked up to a counter protected by bulletproof glass. Behind this partition stood a young, sleek, androgynous-looking Asian man wearing skinny jeans, geek glasses, and a fitted jacket over a fluorescent T-shirt with a Keith Haring design.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked, smoothing a strand of hair behind his ear.

  His affected air clashed strangely with the grimy ambience of the store. Alice regretfully took off her watch and placed it on the counter. “How much?”

  The pawnbroker picked it up and examined it closely. “Do you have a document proving its authenticity? A certificate of origin, for example?”

  “Not on me,” Alice murmured, giving the man a black look.

  The employee handled the watch rather brusquely, changing the position of the hands, squeezing the push button.

  “It’s very fragile,” she scolded him.

  “I’m adjusting the time and date,” he replied without looking up.

  “It shows the right time! Anyway, that’s enough now. How much will you give me for it?”

  “I can offer you five hundred dollars.”

  “What?” Alice exploded, grabbing the watch from him. “This is a collector’s item. It’s worth a hundred times more than that!”

  She was about to leave the store, but Gabriel pulled her back. “Calm down,” he told her, taking her aside. “We’re not selling your husband’s watch, all right? We’re just leaving it here for a while. We’ll come back and pick it up as soon as we’ve solved this mystery.”

  She shook her head. “No. Absolutely not. We’ll have to find another solution.”

  “Like what? There is no other solution and you know it!” he shouted. “We have to eat something before we collapse and we won’t be able to get anything done without money. Go wait for me outside and let me negotiate with this guy.”

  Resentfully, Alice handed him the watch and left the store.

  As soon as she was outside, the mingled odor of spices, smoked fish, and fermented mushrooms hit her, a smell she had not even noticed a few minutes earlier. It made her suddenly nauseated. A convulsion twisted her guts, forcing her to bend forward and vomit a dribble of yellow bile heaved up by her empty stomach. Her head spinning slightly, she stood up and leaned against the wall.

  Gabriel was right. She definitely had to eat something.

  She rubbed her eyes and realized that there were tears rolling down her cheeks. She felt like she was losing control. She felt claustrophobic in this neighborhood, and her body was threatening to collapse. She was paying for the strain of the morning. Her wrist was on fire with pain where the handcuff had dug into her skin, and her muscles were throbbing.

  Worst of all, she felt horribly alone, filled with sorrow and confusion.

  Her mind flashed up memories. The pawning of the watch had brought back painful fragments of the past. She thought about Paul. About their first meeting. How blown away she had been. She thought about how violently she had been in love; it was a force strong enough to destroy all fears.

  Memories rose to the surface, erupting into her mind with the power of a geyser. Memories of happy days that would never return.

  I remember…

  Three years ago

  Paris

  November 2010

  The heavens have opened. The city is deluged.

  “Turn right, Seymour, this is it. Rue Saint-Thomas d’Aquin.”

  The windshield wipers wave frantically from side to side but cannot keep up with the torrent of rain falling on the French capital. No matter how fast the rubber blades sweep across the glass, the translucent curtain remakes itself almost immediately.

  Our unmarked car leaves Boulevard Saint-Germain and takes the narrow road that leads to the Place de l’Église.

  The sky is black. The storm has been raging since the night before, drowning everything. The city looks liquefied. In front of us, the pediment of the church has vanished, its decorations and bas-reliefs blurred by mist. Only the stone angels are still distinguishable.

  Seymour drives around the little square and parks in a delivery area across from the gynecologist’s office. “You think you’ll be long?”

  “Twenty minutes max,” I promise. The gynecologist confirmed the appointment by e-mail. I warned her I was running late.

  Seymour checks his phone messages. “Listen, there’s a café just up there. I’m going to buy a sandwich while I wait for you. I’ll call the station and find out how Savignon and Cruchy are doing with their interrogation.”

  “Okay, send me a text if you have any news. See you later. Thanks for coming with me,” I say. I get out and close the door behind me.

  The rain hits me full force. I lift my jacket above my head to protect myself from the downpour and run the ten yards from the car to the doctor’s office. The secretary takes almost a minute to buzz me in. When I finally enter the lobby, I notice that she is on the phone. She gestures an apology and points me toward the waiting room. I open the door and collapse into one of the leather armchairs.

  Today has been a nightmare thanks to this sudden urinary tract infection. Seriously, it’s been torture; I’m in pain and I need to piss every five minutes, and when I do, it burns like fire. I’ve even had blood in my urine, which freaked me out a little.

  And on top of all that, this is really bad timing. For the past twenty-four hours, my team has been fighting on all fronts. We’re struggling to get a confession from a murderer whom we have no solid evidence against, and now we’ve just landed another case: the murder of a woman found dead in her own home in a bourgeois apartment building on Rue de la Faisanderie in the sixteenth arrondissement. A young schoolteacher, savagely strangled with a nylon stocking. It is three p.m. Seymour and I arrived at the crime scene at seven this morning. We’ve been questioning the neighbors ourselves. I haven’t eaten, I’m nauseated, and I feel like I’m pissing razor blades.

  I grab the compact from my purse and, using the little mirror, attempt to put my hair back into some sort of order. I look like a zombie, my clothes are soaked, and I have the impression that I smell like a wet dog.

  I take a deep breath to calm myself down. This isn’t the first time I’ve had these pains. It’s horribly unpleasant, but at least I know it’s treatable; I’ll take some antibiotics, and in a day all the symptoms will disappear. I tried the pharmacy across the street from my apartment, but the guy who worked there wouldn’t give me anything without a prescription.

  “Ms. Schafer?”

  A man’s voice. I look up from my compact and see a white coat. Instead of my usual gynecologist, there stands a handsome, olive-skinned man, his face framed by curly blond hair and lit up by laughing eyes.

  “I’m Dr. Paul Malaury,” he says, adjusting his tortoiseshell glasses.

  “But I have an appointme
nt with Dr. Poncelet…”

  “My colleague is on vacation. She should have let you know that I was filling in for her.”

  I lose my temper. “Well, she didn’t. In fact, she confirmed our appointment by e-mail.”

  I get out my phone and look for the message on my screen so I can prove it to him. Rereading it, however, I realize that the guy is right; I had only skimmed the message, noting the confirmation of the appointment but missing the part about her being on vacation.

  Shit.

  “Please, come in,” he says in a gentle voice.

  I hesitate, momentarily disconcerted. I’ve had too many bad experiences with men to want one for a gynecologist. It has always seemed obvious to me that a woman is in a better position to understand another woman. It’s a question of psychology, sensitivity, privacy. Still on my guard, I follow him into the office, determined to keep the encounter as brief as possible.

  “All right,” I say, “I’ll get straight to the point: All I need is an antibiotic for cystitis. Dr. Poncelet usually gives me—”

  Frowning, he cuts me off mid-tirade. “Excuse me, but you’re not trying to write the prescription yourself, are you? I’m sure you realize that I can’t prescribe you an antibiotic without examining you.”

  I try to suppress my anger, but I can now see that things are going to be more complicated than I’d hoped. “I’m telling you, I get cystitis all the time. There’s no other possible diagnosis.”

  “That may be true, mademoiselle, but I am the doctor here, not you.”

  “You’re right, I’m not a doctor. I’m a cop and I’m swamped right now. So don’t waste my time with an examination that’ll take forever!”

  “That is precisely what I’m going to do,” he says, handing me a urinalysis cup. “And I am also going to order a cytobacteriological test to be done at the lab.”

  “God, stop being so stubborn and just give me the antibiotics! I need to get out of here!”

  “Please be reasonable and stop acting like a drug addict! There is more to life than antibiotics.”

  I feel suddenly weary and stupid. Another shooting pain tears through my groin. The fatigue that has built up since I joined the Criminal Division rises in me like lava in a volcano. Too many sleepless nights, too much violence and horror, too many ghosts that won’t leave me alone.

  I’m at the end of my rope, exhausted. I need sun, a hot bath, a haircut, a more feminine wardrobe, and a two-week vacation a long way from Paris. A long way from me.

  I look at this guy—elegant, mannered, serene. His handsome face is relaxed; his smile is gentle and charming. I am exasperated by his improbably blond and curly hair. Even the little lines around his eyes are gorgeous. And I feel ugly and dull. Some ridiculous harpy telling him about my bladder problems.

  “Are you drinking enough water?” he asks. “Half of cystitis cases can be treated just by drinking two quarts of water a day.”

  I am no longer listening. This is my strength: I am never discouraged for very long. Images flash up in my mind. The corpse of that woman at the crime scene this morning, Clara Maturin, strangled with a nylon stocking. Her eyes were rolled back, her face frozen in terror. I can’t afford to waste time. Can’t afford to let myself get distracted. I have to catch the murderer before he kills again.

  “What about phytotherapy?” the handsome doctor asks me. “Plants can be very useful, you know, especially cranberries.”

  With a quick, sudden movement, I go behind his desk and pull off a prescription sheet from his pad.

  “You’re right, I am going to write the prescription myself!”

  He is so stunned that he doesn’t even try to stop me.

  I turn on my heel and leave the room, slamming the door behind me.

  Paris, tenth arrondissement

  One month later

  December 24, 2010

  7:00 a.m.

  The Audi speeds through the night and comes out onto Place du Colonel Fabien. The lights of the city are reflected in the imposing glass-and-concrete structure of the Communist Party headquarters. It is freezing cold. I turn the heating up full blast and enter the traffic circle before driving onto Rue Louis-Blanc. I switch on the radio as I’m crossing the Saint-Martin canal.

  France Info—it is seven o’clock. Today’s news is brought to you by Bernard Thomasson.

  Good morning, Florence; good morning, everyone. It looks as if we may well be in for a white Christmas, but no one will be celebrating. The bad weather is, once again, set to dominate today’s news. Météo France has just announced an orange alert, indicating the strong possibility of a major snowstorm due to reach Paris in the late morning. The snow is likely to cause serious traffic disruptions on Île-de-France…

  Stupid goddamn holidays! Stupid goddamn family obligations! Thank God Christmas comes only once a year. For me, though, even that is too much.

  Paris has not yet been hit by the storm, but the respite won’t last long. I take advantage of the light traffic to roar past the Gare de l’Est, get on Boulevard Magenta, and cross the tenth arrondissement from north to south with my foot to the floor.

  I hate my mother, I hate my sister, I hate my brother. And I hate these annual family reunions that always end up a disaster. Bérénice, my little sister, lives in London, where she runs an art gallery on New Bond Street. Fabrice, the middle child, works in finance in Singapore. Every year, with their spouses and children, they spend two days in my mother’s villa near Bordeaux to celebrate Christmas before flying off to exotic, sun-filled destinations: the Maldives, Mauritius, the Caribbean.

  The traffic information service strongly recommends that drivers avoid using their cars in Paris and in the regions to the west, a warning that would seem difficult to obey on Christmas Eve. The Paris prefecture is also warning that the snow might give way to black ice by early evening, when temperatures will fall below zero.

  Rue Réaumur, then Rue Beaubourg. I drive west through the Marais and emerge in the Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville; the building seems to sag under the weight of its Christmas lights. From a distance, the outline of the two huge towers and the spire of Notre-Dame are visible against the night sky.

  Every year, during these two days at my mother’s house, we go through more or less the same farce. My mother goes into raptures about my siblings’ successful careers, the choices they have made in their lives. She swoons over their kids, praising their schools and their fantastic grades. The conversation that follows is always the same: immigration, financial gloom, the terrible state of the country.

  For her, for them, I do not exist. I’m not one of them. I am just an overgrown tomboy, without elegance or distinction. A lowly government employee. I am my father’s daughter.

  The travel chaos threatens to extend to certain Métro and RER commuter-rail train lines. And the same problems will affect air traffic. The Paris airports have warned of multiple delays and cancellations, with thousands of passengers stranded.

  The heavy snowfall should, however, spare the Rhône Valley as well as the Mediterranean region. In Bordeaux, Toulouse, and Marseille, temperatures will be between fifteen and eighteen degrees Celsius, while in Nice and Antibes, lucky residents will be able to eat lunch outside, with temperatures rising into the low twenties.

  Sick of being judged by those jerks. Sick of their endless predictable remarks: “Still no boyfriend?” “Doesn’t look like you’ll be having children anytime soon.” “Why do you dress in such baggy, unflattering clothes?” “Why do you still act like a teenager?” Sick of their vegetarian meals designed to keep them slim and healthy, their bird food, their disgusting quinoa, their tofu pancakes, their mashed cauliflower.

  I turn onto Rue de la Coutellerie and take the Pont Notre-Dame across the river. This is a magical place—to my left, the historic buildings of the Hôtel-Dieu; to my right, the façade of the Conciergerie and the roof of the Tour de l’Horloge.

  Every time I go to the family home, I feel as if I am traveling thirty y
ears back in time, reopening the wounds of childhood, rebreaking the fractures of adolescence, bringing back the bitterness of sibling rivalries, and once again being left in absolute solitude.

  Every year, I tell myself this will be the last time, and every year I go through the whole charade again without knowing why. Half of me would like to burn those bridges, but the other half would give anything to see their faces the day I turn up dressed like a princess with a perfect man on my arm.

  Left Bank. I drive past the quays, then turn left on Rue des Saints-Pères. I slow down, turn on my hazard lights, and park on the corner of Rue de Lille. I get out of the car, put on my orange armband, and ring the intercom of a beautiful, recently renovated building.

  I leave my thumb on the buzzer for a good thirty seconds. The idea took root in my mind early in the week and required quite a bit of research. I know what I’m doing is crazy, but being aware of that is not enough to dissuade me.

  “Yes, who’s there?” a sleepy voice asks.

  “Paul Malaury? Judicial police. Please let me in.”

  “Uh, but…”

  “It’s the police, monsieur. Open up!”

  One of the heavy entrance doors unlocks with a click. Ignoring the elevator, I run up the stairs to the third floor, where I hammer on the door.

  “Okay, okay!”

  The man who opens the door is indeed my handsome gynecologist, but this morning he doesn’t look his best. He’s wearing boxers and an old T-shirt, his blond curls are in disarray, and his face is marked with surprise, fatigue, and worry.

  “Hang on, I know you—you’re…”

  “Captain Schafer, Criminal Division. Monsieur Malaury, I hereby inform you that I am taking you into custody. You have the right to…”

  “I’m sorry, but there must be some mistake! What am I supposed to have done?”

  “Forgery and the use of forged documents. Please follow me.”

  “Is this a joke?”