The Woman In The Fifth

by Douglas Kennedy

  'Monsieur Ricks?'

  I stood up. The cop introduced himself as Inspector Leclerc. He ushered me inside and down a flight of steps. We came into an open area, where two men sat shackled to a bench. (I quickly noticed there were two other empty shackles at the far end of this long bench awaiting new customers, as well as a man locked into a small cell adjacent to the bench.)

  'Busy afternoon?' I asked the inspector.

  'It's always busy here,' he said.

  I followed him down a corridor and into a cramped office with two desks. Leclerc took a seat at the first one, pushed aside some papers, lit up a cigarette and explained that he would take my statement from me. He then talked me, point by point, through everything that had happened when I discovered Omar, and also asked me (as Coutard had done) about my relationship with my neighbor.

  'I saw him from time to time in the corridor of our building,' I dictated to Leclerc. 'I saw him from time to time in the street and around the quartier. Beyond that, we had no additional contact.'

  When Leclerc finished typing, he reread the statement to me and asked if I agreed with it. When I nodded yes, he hit a button on his keyboard and a copy whizzed out of an adjoining printer.

  'Please read it, then sign and date it.'

  After I had done so, he said, 'Now we need to fingerprint you.'

  'I thought I was just being called in to make a statement.'

  'You must be fingerprinted as well.'

  Am I a suspect here? I felt like asking. But I knew the answer to that question, just as I also knew that if I refused to be fingerprinted, I would be acting guilty.

  'Lead the way,' I said.

  He escorted me to another room – where a technician rolled each of my fingers in ink and then made the necessary imprints. I was pointed to a sink and told I could wash my hands there. As I finished, Leclerc said, 'You will need to wait outside while I get your statement to Inspector Coutard. If he needs to interview you further, you'll be summoned to his office.'

  'How long might that be?'

  'It is a busy afternoon . . .'

  He stood up and escorted me to the bench where the two men still sat shackled to its steel frame.

  'You can wait here,' Leclerc said.

  'You mean, you're not going to shackle me down?' I asked.

  A sour smile from Leclerc.

  'Not unless you insist.'

  The two men on the bench eyed me up and down. When I met the gaze of one of them – and saw a druggy aggression in his dilated pupils – he hissed, 'What are you staring at, asshole?'

  'Nothing,' I hissed back.

  'You trying to start something?'

  I just shook my head. But when he jumped up to confront me, the chain on his hand stopped his trajectory and caused him to yelp in pain.

  'I'll get you later,' he said.

  'Don't count on it.'

  I sat at the far end of the bench and pulled out a new book I was plowing through – a collection of Jacques Prévert's Paroles. Though I greatly admired his wordplay and imagery, I wished I had brought something more narrativedriven to read. I tried to ignore the clown at the end of the bench. Having been, in his mind, 'provoked' because I'd looked at him the wrong way, he continued to jeer at me, until one of the uniformed cops came along and told him to shut up. When he back-talked the cop – 'You think you scare me, flic? ' – the officer took his nightstick and slammed it down a few centimeters away from where he was sitting. The guy jumped in fright.

  'Keep shooting off your mouth, the next time it will land between your legs.'

  I pulled the volume of Prévert higher up around my face.

  Either Coutard was truly busy or he was deliberately ignoring me, as half an hour passed without a word from him. I stopped a uniformed officer and asked him if he could find out whether or not Coutard wanted to see me. Twenty more minutes passed, during which time the thought struck me: This is the law-enforcement version of 'passive aggressive'. I stopped another officer.

  'Might you please find out if Inspector Coutard—'

  'He will call you when he's ready.'

  'But I have been waiting nearly an hour—'

  'So? An hour is nothing. Sit down and he'll call you when—'

  'Sir, please—'

  'Sit!' This wasn't a request; rather, an order. I did as told. The thug – still chained to the bench – glowered at me.

  'They've got you by the balls, asshole.'

  'And you're the guy chained to the bench.'

  'Fuck you.'

  The uniformed cop – halfway out of the room – spun around and pointed his baton at me. 'You – no talking.'

  'This guy started it—'

  'I said, no talking.'

  I nodded, looking meek. The psycho laughed. I tried to sink back into Prévert's verses. Psycho Boy continued cackling to himself and occasionally whispering to the other shackled guy. Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty, then . . .

  This is crazy. Just get up and leave – and let them try to stop you.

  But as I was seriously considering this stupid idea, Coutard stuck his head around the door.

  'Monsieur Ricks . . .'

  He motioned for me to follow him. As we left the holding area and headed down a corridor, he said, 'I am sorry they kept you waiting with the local trash.'

  I said nothing – pretty damn certain that I was placed next to Psycho Boy to unnerve me . . . which, truth be told, he succeeded in doing.

  'Just in here,' he said, steering me into a more substantial office than the one occupied by Leclerc. There were two functional armchairs facing a large desk, several framed citations, the ubiquitous photograph of Chirac, and a brimming ashtray next to his computer terminal. He lit up a fresh cigarette and picked up a pair of bifocal glasses and placed them on his nose.

  'So, Monsieur Ricks . . . I have read your statement. Interesting.'

  'Interesting?' I asked cautiously.

  'Yes, interesting. In fact . . . very interesting.'

  'In what way?'

  'In your statement, you repeat what you told me in your chambre yesterday – that you only had minimal contact with Monsieur Omar. And yet, the gentleman who rented you the room, Monsieur Sezer, made a statement to us, where he stated that you had an ongoing war with Monsieur Omar over his sanitary habits . . . specifically, the condition of the toilet you both shared.'

  'That's true, but—'

  'The fact that Monsieur Omar was found dead with a toilet brush in his mouth—'

  'Now hang on a minute—'

  'You have an unfortunate habit of interrupting me, Monsieur Ricks.'

  'Sorry,' I mumbled.

  'I repeat: according to Monsieur Sezer, you repeatedly complained to him about Monsieur Omar's lack of hygiene. Couple this with the fact that a toilet brush was found lodged in Monsieur Omar's mouth, and this leads one to presume that the murderer was making some sort of symbolic point about the gentleman's disregard for communal clealiness. So . . .'

  I raised my hand. Coutard peered down at me over his bifocals.

  'You have a question?' he asked.

  'More of a statement.'

  'You have already made a statement.'

  'But I want to add to that statement.'

  'You have signed that statement.'

  'All I want to say is—'

  'You wish to amend your statement.'

  'I didn't kill Omar.'

  A shrug from the inspector.

  'You expect me to accept that as truth?'

  'Consider this: I called you to report the crime.'

  'In sixty-five percent of the murders I have investigated the actual killer reported the crime.'

  'I am part of the thirty-five percent.'

  'Sticking a toilet brush down your victim's throat while cutting his jugular . . . It is most original.'

  'I didn't—'

  'You say you didn't, but you had a motive: rage at his disgusting habits. Let me guess: he never flushed the toilet after taking a sh
it, and then mocked you when you tried to get him to amend his vile ways. Americans, I know, have a thing about cleanliness . . . and smoking.'

  He exhaled a small cloud as he said that.

  'I have nothing against cigarettes.'

  'I applaud you for such open-mindedness. You also have no objections to living in cramped conditions. In fact, I would posit that you might be the only American living on the rue de Paradis in a chambre de bonne.'

  'It's cheap.'

  'We do know how you found the room. A certain Adnan Pafnuk, who worked at the Hôtel Sélect on the rue François Millet in the Sixteenth. You were a guest at this hotel from December 28 of last year for a period of ten days, during which time you fell sick with the flu and had a dispute with the day clerk – a Monsieur Brasseur . . .'

  His face was impassive as he said this, but I could see him simultaneously studying mine . . . and registering my growing nervousness as the revelation hit me: I am the prime suspect here.

  'Brasseur was a deeply unpleasant man.'

  'So we have learned from anyone who worked with him. Nonetheless, it is also intriguing to note that – just as you had a little war with Monsieur Omar and he was found dead on his beloved toilet – so you also had a little war with Monsieur Brasseur and he was struck down by a car—'

  'You don't think that I—'

  'What did I tell you about interrupting me, monsieur?'

  I hung my head and wished a hole would open up in the floor and whisk me out of this nightmare. Coutard continued, 'We have, of course, checked the motor vehicles records. You do not own a car, nor did you rent a car on the day that Monsieur Brasseur was run down. He remains paralysed – and it appears that the condition is permanent. But who's to say that you didn't hire somebody to mow him down?'

  'My motive being . . . ?'

  'Wasn't there a dispute about money?'

  'He overcharged me for the doctor who came to see me when I was ill.'

  'Voilà: the motive.'

  'I am not in the habit of running down people who cheat me, any more than I cut the throats of neighbors who treat the communal toilet like an open sewer.'

  'Perhaps. But the fact that your fingerprints are all over the toilet brush that had been shoved down Monsieur Omar's throat—'

  I now knew why I had been kept waiting over ninety minutes. They were running a computer check, comparing my prints with those found at the crime scene.

  'I used that brush to clean the toilet,' I said.

  'And you've just interrupted me again.'

  'Sorry.'

  'So you quarreled with Monsieur Brasseur. You quarreled with Monsieur Omar. But you befriended Monsieur Adnan. Was your friendship just a friendship?'

  'What are you implying?'

  'Once again, the peculiarity of the story is fascinating. Consider: an American comes to Paris and falls sick in a hotel. Nothing unusual about that. But then the same American meets a young Turkish gentleman in the hotel – and before you know it, he takes over his chambre de bonne. Now that is an unusual narrative twist, n'est-ce pas?'

  I raised my hand. He nodded that I could speak.

  'If I could explain . . .'

  'Off you go.'

  I took him through everything that happened at the hotel, and how Adnan had looked after me, and how hearing that I was short on funds—

  Now Coutard interrupted me.

  'Because you had lost your job and had to flee the States after your tragic affair with your student?'

  A long pause. I wasn't surprised that he knew this – but hearing him confront me with this fact still unnerved me.

  'Your detective work is most impressive,' I said.

  'It must have been a great tragedy for you, losing your professorship, your family, your maîtresse.'

  'Her death was the worst aspect of it all. The rest—'

  'I saw all the press coverage – courtesy of Google. May I say something which is perhaps beyond my professional concern? As I read about your downfall, I actually felt sorry for you. So what if she was your student? She was over eighteen. She was not coerced. It was love, yes?'

  'Absolutely.'

  'The fact that everyone accused you of trying to make her have an abortion—'

  'I never even knew she was—'

  'You do not have to plead your case with me, monsieur. As far as I'm concerned, you were a victim of a very American inability to accept moral complexity. It all must be black and white. Right and wrong.'

  'Isn't that what a police officer deals with all the time?'

  'All criminal action is fundamentally gray. Because everyone has a shadow . . . and everyone is haunted. Which leads me to another curiosity about this case: your whereabouts at night. Monsieur Sezer told us you were usually out until dawn, and slept in most days until the early afternoon.'

  Sezer was evidently doing his best to shop me – for reasons best known to him. Did he have Omar bumped off? Was that why he was trying to pin it on me?

  'I'm a night owl, yes.'

  'So what do you do all night?'

  'Often I simply walk, or stop in an all-night café and write on my laptop. But many nights I am at home.'

  'But the owner of the boulangerie on the rue du Faubourg Poissonnière informed us that you arrive every morning just after six to buy two pains au chocolat. You do this without fail six mornings a week.'

  'I am a man who likes to stick to a fairly strict routine.'

  'Do you work somewhere at night?'

  'Only on my novel.'

  'The novel that has yet to find a publisher?'

  'Yes, I am an unpublished writer.'

  'Perhaps that will change.'

  'It will.'