The Woman In The Fifth

by Douglas Kennedy

  'Something like that, yes.'

  'And all that extraordinary knowledge you had on Madame Kadar's long-forgotten life? Can you now explain to me why you had amassed such detailed information?'

  'Does it matter anymore?'

  Click, click, click as he opened and closed the Zippo again.

  'I suppose it doesn't,' he said.

  A wave of tiredness hit me. I slumped against the pillows on the bed. Coutard took the hint and stood up.

  'The doctors say you will be discharged in a few days. What will you do then?'

  'Find a new place to live and try to finish my novel. That's the only reason I was in the office that night, to retrieve the disk that I had left there . . .'

  'Yes, I had read that in the statement you gave Inspector Leclerc yesterday.'

  'Did he also tell you that if you had given me back my laptop, I wouldn't have had to return there for the disk . . . ?'

  Click. Click. Click.

  'The laptop was part of an ongoing investigation,' he said. 'Had you had a disk in your room . . .'

  I did have a disk in my room. But she took it when she trashed the place. To panic me. To force me back to the office so she could lock me in and set fire to the place and leave me no option but to cry out for her help. Whereupon . . .

  'When can I get the laptop back?' I asked.

  'In time.'

  'Might I, at least, get a copy of the novel transferred to a disk?'

  'In time.'

  I shut my eyes. I said nothing.

  'We will, no doubt, be in touch,' Coutard said. 'We will naturally need your new address once you are discharged from here . . . so we will know where to contact you when the laptop is ready to be returned.'

  And to know where to keep tabs on me.

  'Fine,' I said.

  'You're a free man now,' Coutard said.

  I am not free.

  They kept me in hospital for a further five days. Leclerc came by on the final day with a copy of a statement for me to sign – a reiteration of my story of how I had been locked into the office as the fire started, and how I had been in the employ of Monsieur Sezer who had always kept the nature of the activities in the building a secret from me.

  'This will lend weight to the accusation that he ordered Delik to destroy the building and yourself at the same time.'

  They were also buying my story about not knowing what went on downstairs, while framing a man for a crime he didn't commit. But isn't that how all narratives are framed? We apportion blame to some, excuse others, and hope that the tidy package will end the story in a satisfactory way. If I now started talking about how the fire was all down to 'her', that would complicate the way they wanted the story to work – and it might lead to me being transferred to the nearest rubber room. Anyway, Delik was guilty of other things. We all are.

  I signed the statement. As I handed it back, Leclerc said, 'You must feel vindicated after what happened to the gentleman who orchestrated your problems in the States.'

  So they had continued to track the Robson story. Then again, they were cops. And cops tracked anything that had to do with tracking you.

  'I orchestrated my problems,' I said. 'Whatever I feel about that man, I still pity him.'

  'You are more magnanimous than I would be, under the circumstances.'

  Magnanimous. That word again. I wasn't magnanimous. I was just aware of a third party controlling everything.

  'You seem to be on the mend,' he said as he was leaving.

  Nothing's mended.

  But they did give me my walking papers the next day. Using the phone directory the day before I had come across a great find: an actual one-star hotel in the Sixth. The guy on the desk sounded pleasant. Yes, they had a room available – seventy euros a night. 'But you say you need it for three or four weeks? Then I can reduce it to sixty euros per night.'

  I did some fast math. Four-twenty a week and another one-fifty in living expenses. I had just enough to fund the next month and a half.

  And then? And then? How will you survive?

  No idea.

  The hotel was on the rue du Dragon. As I got out of the taxi with my suitcase, I scanned the street. Shoe shops everywhere. Expensive women in expensive clothes. Tidy pavements. Tourists. Businessmen in suits. Good restaurants. Money.

  The hotel was agreeable in a fusty old-fashioned way. But it was clean, and the bed was hard, and the floor-to-ceiling windows let in considerable light, and the two men who ran the front desk remained professionally polite. I was also within walking distance of fifteen cinemas. But venturing out was not something I was interested in doing right now. The effects of smoke inhalation were still very much with me. I tried a shortish walk to the Odéon and a secondhand English-language bookshop on rue Monsieur-le-Prince. But after buying four paperbacks, I found the walk home to the hotel a strain – and I collapsed in bed for the rest of the day. The hospital had provided me with three small canisters of oxygen – each with a plastic mouthpiece attached to the top. The nurse in charge of me told me to administer four or five blasts of oxygen whenever shortness of breath arrived. By the end of my first day at the hotel, one of the cans was nearly empty. I could hardly sleep that first night – not just because of my irregular, painful breathing . . . but also because at five the next afternoon, I was due back at rue Linné.

  Because I was still attached to a ventilator I had missed our rendezvous three days ago. I figured she understood that – and would excuse it. But as she was following my every move, she also knew I was mobile enough to have checked into this hotel. So I would be expected to show up at her place tomorrow without fail.

  I stayed in bed all that day, tiredness still overwhelming me. I left the hotel at four forty. I walked to the taxi rank on the boulevard Saint-Germain. There was – miraculously for rush hour – a single taxi in line. I took it. I arrived at the rue Linné ten minutes later. I crossed into the Jardin des Plantes. I walked slowly, conscious of my breathing. My lungs still felt as if I had been a three-pack-a-day smoker for the last thirty years, but the breathlessness seemed a little less ominous today. I noticed the verdancy around me, the deep blue sky, the hint of heat in the air. Early summer had arrived. In fact it had probably arrived weeks ago – but my head was elsewhere.

  Four fifty-five. I approached the door. Five p.m. I punched in the code. Click. I stepped inside, entering that big silence I now recognized as not being normal. The concierge was immobile in his lodge. I headed up the stairs. Not a sound from a single apartment. Until I knocked on her door. She opened it and said, 'You should have been here three days ago.'

  'A fire delayed me,' I said, stepping by her into the apartment.

  'Really?' she said, following me in.

  I grabbed her arm and pulled it up behind her back.

  'Don't bullshit me. You know exactly what happened.'

  'Trying to hurt me now, Harry?' she said, struggling against the arm. 'Because you can't. Pain doesn't have any effect on me.'

  I pushed her away.

  'Well, it does on me – and I nearly died.'

  'But you made a rapid enough recovery if you're now able to push me around.'

  'Push you around? You follow me everywhere—'

  'You have no proof of that—'

  '—you trap me in a burning building. And then, having told me that I would be in a situation where I'd have no choice but to cry out for you and demand your help, I do find myself in a situation where I have no choice but to cry out and demand your help. And what happens?'

  She smiled and lit a cigarette.

  'You have no proof of that.'

  'The cops said a woman phoned them.'

  'Maybe she did. And maybe you should have made more copies of this.'

  She reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out a black floppy disk.

  'You stole that from my room . . .'

  'It's just a floppy disk. One of many millions. And it doesn't have an identifying label on it. Who's to s
ay that it's yours?'

  'You knew that the only reason I went back to that hellhole of an office was to retrieve the disk of my novel because—'

  'The cops impounded your computer after they raided that building?'

  'There! That's my proof you've been following me—'

  'But you still have no actual proof . . . except that you think that I started the fire near the ventilation shaft on the second floor of the building, and added half a bag of sulfur which I later hid in the Internet café to make certain that the entire business was pinned on that bastard Delik—'

  'Stop playing with my head.'

  She came toward me, opening her robe. She had nothing on underneath.

  'But I like playing with your head,' she said, reaching for my pants. 'It's so easy.'

  I tried to pull away, but she grabbed hold of my belt and forced my crotch against hers.

  'If you think I'm going to fuck you—'

  'I do think that,' she said, popping the buttons on my fly.

  'I'm not interested,' I said, trying again to push her away.

  She reached in and took hold of my now erect penis.

  'Liar,' she said. 'And don't give me any crap about your scorched lungs.'

  She grabbed the back of my head and shoved her tongue down my throat, then pushed my pants down. I threw her on to the bed. I was inside her immediately. She became violent, pulling my hair, biting into my neck. But I didn't resist, instead drilling into her with angry ferocity. I came fast. So did she. But as soon as it was over, I too felt something close to derangement. Standing up, I touched my neck and felt blood.

  'Just think,' she said, reaching for her cigarettes. 'You've just fucked a dead woman who made you bleed.'

  I pulled on my jeans.

  'Going so soon?' she asked.

  'What do you want from me?'

  She laughed.

  'What do I want from you? Quel mélodrame, Harry. You know what I want. Our little rendezvous every three days. Nothing more, nothing less. You come here at the specified time. We make love – or "fuck" if you prefer. We drink a little whisky. We talk a bit. You leave at eight, comme d'habitude. I don't care who you see or what you do when you are not here. Go where you want, sleep with who you want . . . as long as you are here at the times agreed. And in exchange for your visits – your fidelity to our rendezvous – I can promise you—'

  'What? ' I asked. 'Eternal life?'

  'Oh, you will die . . . like everyone. That's something completely beyond my power. But one thing I can promise you is that, for the rest of your life, you will have someone watching your back at all times, smoothing the way for you. As I said last time, I cannot manipulate things to give you fame and fortune. Getting your novel published, for example . . .'

  'Have you read it?'

  'Well, I do have the disk . . .'

  'But no computer.'

  'I have access to any computer I want – as long as the person who owns it isn't using it at the time. Anyway, I read it. It's clear you have talent, Harry. Abundant talent. Your turn of phrase, your sense of place, your ability to describe a character's attributes and complexities. All very admirable. The problem – for me, anyway – is that you cannot simply tell the story and let us discover your cleverness. You have to remind us all the time how clever – and faux-poetic – you are . . .'

  'Faux-poetic?'

  'Don't take it so hard, Harry . . . but the narrative is swamped by this absurd lyricism, this need to over-explain, this terrible portentousness—'

  'Everyone's a fucking critic, aren't they?'

  'Are you talking about the inspector?'

  'So you were there in the hospital room when he told me—'

  '—that he had the first chapter of your novel translated? You have no proof that I was there, but—'

  'Can I have the disk back?'

  'By all means,' she said, reaching into the pocket of her robe and tossing it on the front of the bed. 'But honestly, you should either rework the entire narrative, cutting out all the posturing, the—'

  'I don't want to hear anymore of this—'

  'As you like . . .'

  I picked up the disk.

  'I'm never coming back here.'

  A weary sigh as she sat up and closed her robe and reached for her cigarettes.

  'Harry, why make trouble for yourself when I ask so little and offer so much?'

  'Because you're insisting I be indentured to you for—'

  'Three hours twice a week! You call that being "indentured"? Think of your current predicament. No job. No prospects. And what do you have saved from that awful night job? Twenty-eight hundred euros. All right, you'll eke out a few weeks in that one-star hotel on the rue du Dragon. But then . . . ?'

  I put my face in my hands, as again I heard that voice in my head: She is everywhere . . . she knows everything.

  'I'm not coming back . . . and that is final.'

  'Fool.'

  'I don't care what you do to me.'

  'Yes, you do. And yes, you will . . .'

  'It doesn't matter.'

  'It will matter to you.'

  'Torture me, ruin me some more, even take my life . . .'

  'Harry, you don't know what you're saying.'

  'I know exactly—'

  But I couldn't finish that sentence, as I suddenly doubled over, coughing wildly. Phlegm filled my mouth and, for a few moments, I felt as if I was drowning. Margit stood up and guided me into the toilet where she held me as I coughed up black gunk into the sink. Then she led me into her kitchen area and opened a cabinet and handed me a canister of oxygen. Check that: the exact same make of oxygen which had been given me in hospital. I took it from her with relief and pried off the cap and clasped the mouthpiece in my teeth and took two deep blasts of the oxygen. It helped. After a third blast, my breathing eased.

  'Let me guess,' I said. 'You got the canister at the hospital where I was recovering from your pyrotechnics?'

  'Perhaps . . .'

  I stood up, tucking the canister under my arm.

  'You should leave that here for the next time,' Margit said.

  'There's not going to be a next time.'

  'Yes, there will.'

  'Don't count on it.'

  'You'll be here – because you'll have to be here. But Harry – think carefully before you decide to terminate your minor obligations—'

  'Obligations? I'm not indebted to you for anything.'

  'You called out for me when you were about to die . . . and then you didn't die.'

  'You are not my savior, and you are not seeing me again.'

  'Don't make me force you back here.'