The Forgotten Dead

by Tove Alsterdal

  I pulled out one of the tickets that I’d bought earlier. They were good for both the bus and subway, though I’d never intended to use them for anything but the bus. I stuck the ticket in the machine, silently offering up a prayer, and it popped up at the other end.

  Pimple-face gave his companion a fist bump and then continued on alone towards line 6. I followed, hoping that my analysis of his character was correct. Young and shy and subject to severe acne. The archetype of an easily duped young guy with low self-esteem.

  Down on the platform I was met with a warm breeze. It was stifling, with a scorched smell, as if someone had been burning rubber. The train pulled in with a clatter, and I got on just as a foghorn sounded somewhere and the doors closed.

  ‘Hey, I recognize you,’ I said, sitting down across from the boy in the window seat. ‘You work at Taillevent. You were my waiter today!’

  ‘I’m not a waiter,’ he said, looking away, embarrassed. ‘I’m just a busboy.’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t tell the difference,’ I said. ‘It must be amazing to work in such a fancy restaurant.’

  I was forced to lean forward a bit to control the dizziness. My knees touched his because there was very little room. He was holding a bag of candy on his lap.

  ‘It’s actually really hard work,’ he said, looking out of the window. A black tunnel covered with graffiti, cables running along the walls.

  ‘Could I have a piece?’ I asked, pointing to the candy. His cheeks flushed pink. I made a point of brushing against his hand as I fished out a yellow marshmallow crocodile. ‘That’s just like New York,’ I said. ‘It’s always the busboys who do the hard work.’

  ‘It’s even worse now because Michelin took away a star,’ he said. ‘Everything has to be perfect. As if it was our fault they lost the star.’

  The subway careened and whistled and braked. There couldn’t be more than a minute between stations.

  ‘You speak really good English,’ I said. ‘There aren’t many in Paris who do, but I suppose it’s a requirement because of all the foreign customers and celebrities who come to the restaurant, and you have to wait on all of them.’

  ‘Except that I’m not a waiter.’

  The tunnel outside grew brighter and the subway car clattered out into the fresh air above ground. I saw the river and the Eiffel Tower, and suddenly I could breathe again.

  ‘I heard there was an American journalist who caused a big ruckus last Thursday. Were you working that day?’

  ‘I work every day. Well, we’re not open on the weekends, but otherwise—’

  ‘It makes me ashamed to be an American when something like that happens.’

  ‘But it’s not your fault.’ He was smiling now, at least.

  ‘No, but it feels like it is. It’s the same thing with the war in Iraq. I wasn’t the one who thought that up.’ I laughed, and he did too, his voice sounding shrill and nervous.

  ‘One of the guys who works in the restaurant told me that he wasn’t allowed to come back. That journalist, I mean,’ I went on, digging my hand into the bag of crocodile candies. ‘I heard he behaved abominably. Hitting people, and who knows what else.’

  ‘He didn’t hit anyone.’

  ‘No?’ I said, breathlessly. ‘So what did he do?’

  The boy squirmed a bit in his seat, but that merely brought my legs up against his other thigh as well.

  ‘I guess he was bothering one of our customers,’ he said. ‘It’s important for them to be left in peace. They often have meetings at the same time, while they’re eating. They’re very busy, and that’s why it caused so much trouble. Because he was a journalist. Monsieur Thery said we shouldn’t let in any of those scandal reporters. Paparazzi, you know.’

  We had crossed the river and were now roaring into the tunnel realm again. My armpits were wet with sweat. I’d heard that name before, but where?

  ‘Monsieur Terri?’ I said. ‘He’s a politician or something, right?’ I automatically copied the boy’s pronunciation. That was something I’d always been good at. Mimicry and the ability to adapt. Hiding in a crowd.

  ‘No, no. Monsieur Thery is a businessman. He dines with us all the time.’

  ‘Oh, right. You mean Maurice Terri.’

  ‘No, Alain. Alain Thery.’

  A hot wind rushed through the subway car at the next station, and all of a sudden I knew where I’d heard that name. A woman’s voice saying: ‘Was it Alain Thery who sent you?’

  ‘So what did he do?’ I asked. ‘The journalist, I mean.’

  ‘I don’t know. I was in the kitchen.’ He stood up. ‘The next stop is mine.’

  I waved as he pushed his way through the car. The next instant, as the doors opened, I headed in the opposite direction and managed to jump out just before they closed again.

  I kicked off my shoes and took off my dress as soon as I was back in my room. I sat down in front of my computer wearing only a bra and panties. Olivier had told me how to connect to the Wi-Fi, and five seconds later I was able to pull up Google. I’d also asked the clerk how to spell a name pronounced Terri in French.

  I got a hit at once. The easiest first step. Wikipedia had a short article about the businessman Alain Thery. It was written in French, but I still managed to glean a few things from the text.

  Alain Thery was born in 1959 in Pas-de-Calais. Among other things, he worked as a consultant in finance and development. The words were the same in most languages. He owned several companies, and there was a link to one of them. There was also a list of numerous newspaper articles in which he was mentioned. The first eighteen were in French, but the nineteenth was on a multilingual news site.

  Five years ago Alain Thery had been named Newcomer of the Year in the business world. His consulting firm had shown a 400 per cent increase in profit over three years. The next step was to expand into several other European countries, aiming for the global market.

  I sent an email to Benji, attaching the links to the eighteen other articles about Thery written in French and asked him to translate them for me. Not word for word, I added. Just enough so I’d know if there was anything in them besides the usual hype.

  I got up and went into the bathroom to fill my plastic cup with water. Then I realized I still had three truffles left from Taillevent in my bag. They had stuck together a bit, and tasted of bitter cacao and silky vanilla.

  Back at the computer, I pulled up the home page for Lugus, Alain Thery’s company. The whole page was in blue tones, with images of the sky and clouds, and a floating molecule to illustrate the company’s business concept. In the column on the left were four tiny flags. I clicked on the Union Jack.

  ‘To kill two birds with one stone is our motto in every situation,’ it said at the top of the page.

  And further: ‘By combining technical know-how, strategic planning, and contextual analysis, we pave the way for a corporation to become rejuvenated, as required by an ever-changing world.’

  What bullshit, I thought.

  I surfed aimlessly through the home page without understanding why Patrick would be interested in this man. Or was he? Maybe it was like Pimple-face had said. They’d taken him for a paparazzo.

  But the woman in the car had also mentioned Alain Thery’s name.

  I clicked on the company name, and a picture appeared of a sculpture with three faces. The caption explained that Lugus was the name of a Gallic god who reigned over trade and business. He was also the god of travel, and had created the arts. Typical consultants, I thought. They always took those sorts of names, which sounded so profound and yet didn’t mean a damn thing.

  ‘You can choose between creating a future or reacting to the past.’

  I got up and stretched so hard my joints creaked.

  Patrick had talked about similar things in his story about the new economy. It was mostly about the losers — workers whose jobs disappeared or were outsourced to India. The winners included various types of consultants, brokers, middlemen. People who r
eally didn’t produce anything. They were intermediaries, conveying information and knowledge, money, services, goods and property. They didn’t create anything of value, and yet that was where the big money was. Patrick had quoted an author — I thought his name was Robert Sennett, or maybe it was Richard. At any rate, the man had written a book about how the new economy had changed people’s morals and way of thinking so that everything that had previously lasted a lifetime became short-term, and fixed values evaporated.

  That was the sort of thing Patrick wrote about. I cursed that pimply boy. Sneak a few snapshots of celebrities? Patrick would never do anything like that. But what if they really had thought he was a paparazzo? That meant he must have taken a camera into the restaurant. But why? To snap a picture of Alain Thery!

  I slammed my hand on the desk. Of course. The photographs. Those boring and blurry pictures that Patrick had sent home from Paris.

  The memory stick was in a folder with various bills and sketches for stage sets that I’d thrown into my suitcase when I was packing. I stuck it into my laptop. While I waited for the pictures to load, I opened the French articles about Alain Thery, one after the other.

  In the fifth article I found a photo of him.

  I sat there for a long time, staring at the man on the screen. He had a big nose, and he wore wire-rimmed glasses. His pale eyes looked almost white, but that could also be due to the photo’s exposure. The image was cut off just below the knot of his tie. He wasn’t bad looking, but not especially attractive either. He was the boy-next-door, the man in the bank, a type to be found by the dozen around Wall Street.

  And he looked awfully familiar.

  Patrick’s photos now showed up on the screen, one after the other, and there was no longer any doubt.

  Alain Thery was one of the men he had photographed. His face appeared in picture after picture, until I’d viewed him from every possible angle. Patrick must have been obsessed with capturing his image.

  The question was why?

  I got up again and went over to the window. Lights were on in the garret rooms of the Sorbonne. It looked so nice and homely, with the lace curtains in the windows. Somebody actually lived there. A little boy was riding a tricycle between the rooms. He was maybe three or four years old. He shot past one window and disappeared, then popped into view in the next. I wondered whether he was the son of the caretaker or maybe even the chancellor. What became of someone who grew up living in the garret apartment of a university? Then it occurred to me that somebody might be studying me in the same way. Like an animal in a cage, a woman in an aquarium, wearing a bra and panties.

  I moved away from the window and sat down, clicking on the Lugus home page again, and this time I happened to open the French version. It looked slightly different, with more references, more banners. In French the phrase ‘to kill two birds with one stone’ was faire d’une pierre deux coups. At the very bottom of the page, in minuscule type, was the word contacts. I clicked on that and got the address: 76 avenue Kléber. I tilted my chair so far back that it almost fell over.

  What the fuck?

  I had marked number 76 avenue Kléber on my map. It was one of Patrick’s addresses.

  The street was only a stone’s throw from the Arc de Triomphe, a fashionable kilometre from the Taillevent restaurant, in the same neighbourhood where I’d spent an entire afternoon at an Internet café. I hadn’t felt like wandering around in those uncomfortable shoes I was wearing. I thought I’d save that for the next day. It had seemed more important to find out more details about the fire.

  I clicked on the email address listed on the company’s contact page and started formulating a polite request for a meeting. I paused to give it some thought, and then wrote that I represented an American company, which was basically true (even though my company consisted of only myself and a poorly paid assistant without a real contract). Only after I’d read through the email for the third time and was just about to press ‘Send’ did I realize what an idiot I was.

  Alain Thery hadn’t quadrupled his profit because he was a fool.

  He would recognize the name Cornwall in the email address and associate it with the journalist he’d wanted to get rid of.

  I scratched my head, pondering what to do.

  It was the simplest thing in the world to create an address. Benji did it every fifteen minutes when he was web dating. He had dozens of digital personas, each with its own digital love life. It was a miracle he never got them mixed up. He could easily have ended up trying to date one of the versions he’d created for himself.

  That prompted another thought. Had I ever cancelled my old email address?

  I opened the email programme and quickly sent a test message to a.sarkanova@workmates.com.

  When I came back from the bathroom, the mail had landed in my inbox. It was pinging merrily, like a good friend who had stopped by to end my isolation. Alena Sarkanova actually did exist. In the digital realm she hadn’t disappeared. I hadn’t called myself Alena since my early teen years. I liked Ally, since it didn’t provoke questions about my origin. It was the name in my passport, but Patrick was the only one who ever called me by my real name. He said it was too lovely not to use it. Like ‘music and purity, something Botticelli might have painted’.

  Workmates was a usable IP address. It didn’t reveal anything. If anyone wanted to track it down, they’d find a loosely connected collective of freelancers who had once shared an office but now had only this domain name in common.

  I sent my message using this email address.

  Then I let my laptop power down into sleep mode. The screen faded to black and fell silent. I crept under the covers, not bothering to take off the bedspread. The boy across the way had stopped riding around on his trike.

  Chapter 6

  Paris

  Friday, 26 September

  Attorney Sarah Rachid quickly crossed the square, heading for the restaurant where I was waiting. I knew at once it had to be her. There was something about her haste and determined stride.

  ‘I don’t really have time for this,’ she said when I waved her over to my table. She sat down and took off a pair of thin gloves. I noticed she was wearing a simple gold wedding band.

  ‘It’s terribly kind of you to meet with me,’ I said.

  Sarah Rachid gave me a suspicious look and then turned to glance at the daily menu, which was printed on a blackboard. She didn’t look especially pleased with that either.

  Her reply to my email had been chilly and formal. She wrote that she didn’t have time. She couldn’t discuss anything due to lawyer–client confidentiality. If necessary, she could explain this over lunch. She really couldn’t take the time (she again wrote), but she did have to eat. She’d be at Patio’s on place de la Sorbonne at one o’clock today. Friday. Please confirm receipt of this email.

  I’d written back to say that I was a researcher with the magazine, and I was supposed to double-check some of the information. I thought it best to stick to the same story.

  Sarah motioned to the waiter.

  ‘I don’t understand why Patrick gave out my name,’ she said. ‘I told him I didn’t want to be quoted.’

  ‘So you do know him?’

  ‘Why do you ask that?’

  The waiter brought over bottles of water and a basket of bread. Sarah ordered Cassoulet Maison, the daily special, and I did the same, though I had no clue what it might be. Silently we helped ourselves to the bread.

  ‘I read about that case of the girl who was working as a household slave,’ I then said, trying to soften her up a bit. ‘It was great you were able to help her win restitution.’

  ‘I never talk about my cases.’

  ‘But I saw that you gave a statement to the newspaper. It must have been a big victory.’

  ‘I didn’t know they were going to quote me.’

  Two steaming soup tureens were set on the table. Meat and vegetables swimming in a greasy broth.

  ‘I’m a lawyer.
I devote all my energy to the law,’ said Sarah Rachid, dipping a piece of bread in the broth. ‘I don’t use the media as an arena for playing out my arguments. In my opinion, it’s the courts of law that should administer justice in this country. Not the press, the radio, or TV.’ She gave me a hostile look. ‘Maybe you consider that an old-fashioned point of view?’

  ‘Is that what Patrick thought? Did he want you to make a statement?’

  ‘He understood when I told him I didn’t want to do that. Besides, I merely helped him with a few facts. He said it would be completely off-the-record.’

  ‘What would?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What would be off-the-record?’ I said. ‘I’m sorry for bothering you with all these questions, but we haven’t been able to get hold of Patrick.’

  Sarah wiped her mouth with a napkin and glanced away. She had a long face, and the corners of her mouth turned down, giving her a slightly surly look, enhanced by the fact that she actually was in quite a surly mood.

  I picked at the food in my bowl, then bit into something that looked like a tiny chicken thigh. It had a strong, bitter taste.

  ‘What sort of bird is this?’ I asked.

  Sarah cast a quick glance at the bone, which was dripping with greasy broth.

  ‘Rabbit,’ she said.

  I dropped the meat back into the soup bowl and stabbed a piece of carrot instead.

  ‘Are most of your clients immigrants?’ I went on, trying to get her to talk.

  ‘Why do you ask? Because you think I’m an immigrant?’

  Her eyes narrowed into slits. This was clearly the wrong tactic.

  ‘I didn’t know you were an immigrant,’ I said.

  ‘I may have an Arabic name, but I was born here in France. I’m a lawyer. I do my job. That’s all.’

  Sarah stared angrily at her stew as she ate.