The Woman In The Fifth

by Douglas Kennedy

  'And Lovas?'

  'The same treatment. Only in this instance, a neighbor heard Lovas scream something – probably before Madame Kadar gagged his mouth – and decided to call the police. They took their time arriving – maybe thirty minutes after the call. When they got there, they banged on the door and announced themselves and insisted whoever was there should open the door immediately. There was no reply. So they got the concierge to open the door. As the door swung up, a spray of blood hit the officers. Madame Kadar had just cut her throat . . . and judging from the blood still pumping from Lovas, Madame Kadar had sliced his jugular right before her own.

  'They tried to save them both. They both died.'

  He reached into the file, pulled out two aging black-and-white photos and pushed them across the table to me. The first showed the bloodied head of a man lying limp, his torso also covered in blood, his hands taped to a table and so mutilated that they appeared to be gory stumps.

  The second showed a woman sprawled on a linoleum floor, lying in a pool of blood, her clothes sodden, a kitchen knife in one hand, a gash across her throat. I studied the face. Without question, it was a younger version of Margit. I looked at her eyes. Though frozen, they seemed to glow with an exultant rage – the same sort of heightened fury that I saw in her eyes when she talked about the death of her father, or the accident that took Zoltan and Judit from her. I stared at her post-mortem eyes again in the photograph. It was as if Margit had taken this rage with her from the past life into eternity.

  The past life? But she was here, in this life. Now.

  I pushed the photograph back toward the inspector. I bowed my head, not knowing what to say, what to think.

  'Given the monstrousness of the attacks,' Coutard said, 'it is obvious that the murderer was not of sound mind. Yet she might not have committed suicide if the police hadn't shown up while she was slowly maiming Lovas to death.'

  'But she is not dead,' I said.

  He tapped the crime-scene photograph of Margit.

  'You insist that the woman shown here is alive?'

  'Yes.'

  He handed me another document from the file. It was in Hungarian and looked official. Toward the top of it was a space in which Margit's name had been written.

  'This is the death certificate from the medical examiner in Budapest – signed after he performed the autopsy on Madame Kadar. The investigating inspector in Saint- Germain-en-Laye closed the case on the murder of Monsieur Dupré upon receiving this certificate from the Hungarian authorities, as he had proof that the individual who perpetrated this crime was dead. But you still insist that Madame Kadar is alive?'

  'Yes.'

  'Do you understand the seriousness of your position, Monsieur Ricks?'

  'I didn't kill Omar. I didn't kill Yanna's husband.'

  'Even though all the evidence points to you. Not just evidence . . . but motive as well.'

  'I had nothing to do with their deaths.'

  'And your alibi – at least in the case of the murder of Monsieur Attani – is that you were at the apartment of the woman whose death certificate you have just read?'

  'You have heard me tell you, in detail, essential aspects of her life—'

  'And these details could have been easily researched by you using a search engine . . .'

  'Ask yourself, Inspector, please, the same question you posed to me: Why would I be interested in such an old murder case? How would I have found out about it in the first place? And how would I know more intimate details of Madame Kadar's past than you do?'

  'Monsieur, I have been doing this job for over twenty years now. And if there is one thing I comprehend about human behavior, it is this: the moment you think you can predict its pattern is the moment when it changes, and you discover that other people's realities are often divorced from the one you exist in. You say a dead woman is alive. I say, the man sitting in front of me seems rational and lucid and intelligent. And yet, when shown proof that his lover left this life twenty-six years ago . . .'

  He opened his hands, as if to say, And there it is.

  'So you must understand, monsieur . . . I am not interested in why you have created this invention in your head, or how you gleaned your facts, or whether or not you embellished the story with tales of your lover being forced to watch her father's execution. Naturally, I am intrigued by such detail. Naturally, I am curiously impressed by your forceful certainty that Madame Kadar exists. But as a police inspector, such interest is overshadowed by empirical facts. And the empirical facts of the case are profoundly empirical. The facts point to your culpability. Just as the fact that you use a dead woman as an alibi . . .'

  Another shrug.

  'I do suggest that you reconsider your story, monsieur.'

  'I am telling you the truth,' I said.

  He let out a deep, frustrated sigh.

  'And I am telling you that you are either a compulsive liar or an irrational liar or both. I am now sending you back to the cells so you can reflect on your situation, and perhaps come to your senses and end this mad self-deception.'

  'Am I not allowed some sort of legal representation at this stage?'

  'We can hold you for seventy-two hours without contact with the outside world.'

  'That's not fair.'

  'No, monsieur . . . that's the law.'

  He picked up the phone and dialed a number. Then he stood up and went over to the window and peered out.

  'This morning we visited the address you gave my colleague of the apartment where you were having your "assignations" with Madame Kadar. The concierge said that he wasn't aware of your visits. So how did you gain access to it?'

  'Madame Kadar let me in.'

  'I see.'

  'How else would I have gotten inside? I mean, the apartment I described to you is exactly the one you saw, isn't it?'

  Coutard continued to stare out the window as he said, 'Madame Kadar did live in that apartment until her death in 1980. Since then, it has been empty . . . though it has remained in her estate. A small trust that was left behind after her death continues to pay, by prélèvement automatique, the service charge. But no one has occupied it in over twenty-five years. Can you describe the apartment to me, please?'

  I did. In detail. He nodded.

  'Yes, that is the apartment as I found it . . . including the 1970s décor. There was one major difference, however. The apartment I saw hadn't been cleaned or dusted in years.'

  'That's nonsense. It was always spotless when I visited it.'

  'I'm certain that's how you saw it, monsieur.'

  A uniformed officer knocked on Coutard's door and came inside.

  'Please take Monsieur Ricks back to his cell. He will be spending some more time with us.'

  The officer approached me and took me by the arm. I turned to Coutard and said, 'You have to try to believe me.'

  'No, I don't,' he said.

  They locked me up in the same cell. I was left alone there for hours with no reading material, no pen or paper on which to write, nothing but my thoughts to preoccupy me.

  Am I insane? Have I been imagining all this? During the past few months, have I been acting out a strange, warped reverie? And if it is true that Margit has been dead for all these years, what sort of alternative reality have I been living in all these months?

  A tray of cold tasteless food arrived around seven that evening. I was famished, so I ate it. Around nine, sleep began to overtake me. I stripped off my now rank jeans and crawled under the grubby blanket and quickly drifted into unconsciousness. Only tonight I did not sleep the dreamless sleep I craved. Tonight the nocturnal screening room in my mind played out a horror show where there was a trial, and I was in the dock, and everyone kept pointing fingers at me and shouting in French, and there was a judge calling me a danger to society and condemning me to life imprisonment with no chance of parole, and being locked up in this cell for twenty-three hours a day, and me continuing to swear blind that they had to find this woman Margi
t . . . that she would explain it all . . . and the walls of the cell closing in around me . . . and me huddled in a corner on the concrete floor, my head leaned up against the toilet, my eyes as frozen as Margit's in the crime-scene photograph . . . and . . .

  That's when I jumped awake, my body drenched, my teeth biting in the filthy pillow. For a moment I didn't know where I was. Then the realization hit: You're incarcerated.

  I had no watch, so I didn't know what time it was. I had no toothbrush, so I couldn't rid my mouth of the disgusting aftertaste of my nightmare. I had no change of clothes or access to a shower, so I was now feeling totally ripe. After emptying my bladder in the toilet and finishing what little water was left in the bottle, I stretched out on the bunk and shut my eyes and tried to empty my brain and blank out the present and tell myself to somehow stay calm.

  But it's hard to vanquish negative thoughts when you're about to be charged with two murders, and when you're living in a hall of mirrors where nothing is as it seems . . .

  The cell door opened. Morning light filtered in. An officer stood there with a tray of food.

  'What time is it?' I asked.

  'Eight thirty.'

  'Is there any chance I could have a toothbrush and toothpaste, please?'

  'We're not a hotel.'

  'How about something to read then?'

  'We're not a library.'

  'Please, monsieur . . .'

  He handed me the tray. The cell door closed behind him. There was a plastic cup filled with weak orange juice, a hard roll, a pad of butter, a small plastic mug of coffee, plastic utensils. Five minutes later the cell door briefly opened and a hand shot in, holding a copy of yesterday's Le Parisien.

  'Thank you,' I said as the cell door clanged shut. Having devoured the breakfast – I was famished – I now devoured the newspaper, reading it cover to cover, trying to lose myself in its reports of petty crimes, of disputes between neighbors, of road accidents, of more internal problems with some local football team, of new movies opening this week and the bust-up of a French popstar marriage. The obituaries, as always, gripped me. How do you summarize an entire life – especially one which doesn't merit a big journalistic splash? Beloved husband of . . . Adored husband of . . . Much admired colleague of . . . A respected employee of . . . Sadly missed by . . . Funeral Mass held tomorrow at . . . In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to . . . And that's that. Another life vanished.

  That's the thing about the obituary page. You always know there is a story behind a story – all the hidden complexities that make a life a life. You also know that, one day, your life too will be summarized in a few hundred words . . . if you're lucky. Death is the great leveler. Once you've crossed over into that realm of nothingness, your story only really stays in the minds of those closest to you. And when they too vanish . . .

  Nothing matters. And because of that, everything matters. You have to counter the insignificance of what you do with the belief that, somehow, it does have import. Otherwise what can you do but despair and think, When I'm dead, none of the forces that drove my life – the anger, the neediness, the ambition, the search for love, the regrets, the terrible mistakes, the futile pursuit of some sort of happiness – will count for anything.

  Unless death isn't the end of everything.

  'This is the death certificate from the medical examiner in Budapest – signed after he performed the autopsy on Madame Kadar . . . But you still insist that Madame Kadar is alive? '

  I didn't know the answer to that question anymore.

  The cell door opened again. A new officer entered.

  'The inspector wants to see you now.'

  I pulled on my jeans and ran my hands through my grubby hair. The officer coughed loudly, a signal for me to hurry up. Then he took me by the arm and led me back upstairs.

  Coutard was seated by his desk, smoking. My passport was next to the ashtray. Inspector Leclerc was standing by the window, in conversation with Coutard. The talk stopped as soon as I was brought into the room. Coutard motioned for me to take a seat. I did so.

  'Sleep well?' he asked.

  'No,' I said.

  'Well, you won't have to spend another night as our guest.'

  'Why is that?'

  'Because you are no longer a suspect.'

  'I'm not?'

  'It's your lucky day: we found the murderer of Monsieur Omar and Monsieur Attani.'

  'Who was it?'

  'A certain Monsieur Mahmoud Klefki . . .'

  'Never heard of him.'

  'A diminutive man with what seems to be a permanent scowl. He works for your landlord, Monsieur Sezer. Perhaps you met him?'

  Of course I did. Many times. Only I knew him as Mr Tough Guy.

  'Once or twice, in passing.'

  'We found the knife used to murder Omar in Klefki's chambre, as well as the hammer with which he attacked Monsieur Attani. The blood of both victims matched that found on the respective weapons.'

  'Did Klefki confess?'

  'Of course not – and he cannot begin to explain why the hammer and the knife were hidden beneath the sink in his room.'

  Leclerc came in here: 'Murderers can often be overconfident – or stupid – when it comes to disposing of the weapons. Especially if they are arrogant enough to believe they can escape detection.'

  'Did he give you any reason for the attacks?'

  'How could he – as he continues to deny them? But we did discover that his employer, Monsieur Sezer, was having a long-running dispute with Attani over the protection that Sezer charged for the bar Attani owned. And in the case of Monsieur Omar, we have heard rumors that he had borrowed a significant sum from Monsieur Sezer – which he was supposed to be paying back, at an exorbitant rate of interest, on a weekly basis. So we will also be charging Sezer with ordering the two murders. With any luck, we can turn Klefki against his employer – in exchange for a fifteen-year sentence, rather than life imprisonment . . .

  'So, Monsieur Ricks – you are free to leave. But if you could tell us anything else about Monsieur Sezer and his various business enterprises . . .'

  'Why would I know about such things?'

  'Because we know you work for him.'

  'That's not true.'

  'There is an alleyway on the rue du Faubourg Poissonnière, near the corner of the rue des Petites Écuries. You have been spotted going in there most nights.'

  'By whom?'

  'As I told you yesterday, I ask the questions here.'

  'I use the place as an office.'

  'Yes, we found your laptop when we raided it yesterday.'

  'You raided it?'

  'Another question, monsieur. If it is merely your office, why is there a television monitor on the table where you work? A monitor connected to a television camera on the street.'

  'Yeah, that was there when I rented the office.'

  'Rented it from whom?'

  'Sezer,' I said, knowing full well that if I mentioned Kamal's name, they would start asking questions about how I knew the late owner of my local Internet café and whether I had any thoughts on why his body was discovered some months back in a dumpster near the Périphérique. Anyway, Sezer would back me up here, because he didn't want it known what went on downstairs . . . though I was certain that the cops had already raided the place and were now trying to see how much I knew.