The Empire Of The Wolves

by Jean-Christophe Grangé

  "And the chimes must be pretty loud. She'd been here since 2001, hadn't she?"

  Tanoi put down the photo. "Yes."

  "What was her job?"

  "Seamstress."

  "She worked downstairs, I suppose?"

  The manager raised his eyebrows while putting away his glasses. The workers had now started sewing again. They seemed to realize that the policemen were not after them it was their boss who had problems.

  "Downstairs?" he asked.

  "In the cellar." Schiffer was getting annoyed. "Now wake up, Tanoi, or I'll lose my temper."

  The Turk swayed slightly on his heels. Despite his age, he looked like a contrite schoolboy "Yes, she worked in the lower workshop."

  "Where was she from, Gaziantep?"

  "Not exactly-a nearby village. She spoke a southern dialect.”

  “Who's got her passport?"

  "She had no passport."

  Schiffer sighed, as though saddened by this fresh lie. "Tell me about her disappearance."

  "There's nothing to tell. She left the workshop on Thursday morning. She never made it home."

  "Thursday morning?"

  "Yes, at six. She was on the night shift."

  The two officers glanced at each other. So she had indeed been on her way home when she was jumped, but this had been at dawn. They had been right, except for the time of day.

  "You say she never made it home," the Cipher continued. "Who told you that?"

  "Her fiancé."

  "They went home together?"

  "No, he's on the day shift."

  "Where can I find him?"

  "Nowhere. He went back home." Tanoi's answers were as stiff as the stitches in his overalls.

  "He didn't try to recover the body?"

  "He had no papers. He couldn't speak French. So he fled in grief A Turkish destiny. An exile's destiny."

  "Spare me the violins. Where are her colleagues?"

  "What colleagues?"

  "The ones who go home at the same time. I want to question them.”

  “That's impossible. Gone, all of them, vanished."

  "Why?"

  "They're scared."

  "Of the killer?"

  "No, of you. Of the police. No one wants to get caught up in this affair."

  The Cipher stood squarely in front of the Turk, hands behind his back. "I think you know far more than you're letting on, fat man. So let's take a stroll down into the cellars. It might refresh your memory"

  The Turk did not budge. The sewing machines continued to rattle. Music was twisting beneath the steel girders. He hesitated another second, then headed toward an iron door under one of the galleries.

  The officers followed him. At the bottom of the stairs, they dived down a dark corridor, went through a metal door, then took a second corridor with a clay floor. They had to bend their heads to walk. Bare light bulbs, hanging from the pipes on the ceiling, lit the way. Two rows of doors made of planks of wood, numbered with chalk figures, faced each other. A humming rose up from the depths.

  When they reached a turning point, their guide stopped and picked up a metal bar concealed behind the springs of an old wire mattress. Advancing cautiously he started knocking on the pipes across the ceiling, setting off a series of deep echoes.

  Suddenly, invisible enemies appeared. Rats gathered together on a cast-iron arch above their heads. Paul remembered the forensic scientist's words: With the second one, it was different. I think he used something… that was alive.

  The manager swore in Turkish and banged as hard as he could in their direction. The rodents vanished. The entire corridor was now vibrating. Every door was trembling on its hinges. Finally, Tanoi stopped in front of number 34.

  He forced the door open with his shoulder. A thundering noise exploded outward. Light spread into the tiny workshop. About thirty women were sitting behind sewing machines, which were going at full speed, as though propelled by their own momentum. Bent double beneath the strip lights, the seamstresses were pushing pieces of cloth beneath the needles, without paying the slightest attention to the visitors.

  The room measured no more than twenty square yards and had no means of ventilation. The air was so heavy-with smells of dyes, particles of cloth, the stench of solvents-that it was barely breathable. Some of the women wore scarves over their mouths. Others had babies on their laps, wrapped in shawls. Children were also working, grouped together on the piles of fabric, folding them and packing them in boxes. Paul was suffocating. He felt like a character in a film who wakes up in the middle of the night only to find out that his nightmare is real.

  Schiffer adopted his most sincere delivery: "This is the real face of Sürelik Limited! Twelve or fifteen hours' work, several thousand garments produced per day, per worker. The Turkish version of our three eight-hour shifts reduced to just two, or even one. And the same applies in all the other cellars, my boy"

  He seemed almost delighted by the cruelty of the scene. "But don't forget, all this has the state's blessing. Everyone closes their eyes. The clothing industry is based on slavery."

  The Turk was trying to look ashamed, but a flame of pride was burning in his pupils. Paul looked around at the women. A few eyes rose in response, but their hands continued their flurry, as though nothing and nobody could stop them.

  He then pictured among them the matted faces, long wounds and bloody crevices of the victims. How did the killer get to these underground women? How had he noticed that they looked alike?

  The Cipher launched into another round of questions, his voice raised above the din. "When there's a change of shift, that's when the delivery boys take away the finished products, isn't it?"

  "That's right."

  "If you include all the workers coming out of the shops, that means there's quite a crowd on the streets at six in the morning. And no one saw anything?"

  "I swear to you."

  The cop leaned against the wall of cinder blocks.

  "Don't swear. Your God is less merciful than mine. Have you spoken to the bosses of the other victims?"

  "No."

  "You're lying, but never mind. What do you know about this series of murders?"

  "They say that the women are tortured, their faces destroyed. That's all I know."

  "And the police have never come to see you?"

  "No."

  "So what's your private police force doing?"

  Paul trembled… It was the first time he had heard of such a thing. So the neighborhood had its own force of order.

  Tanoi yelled over the machines: "I don't know. They found nothing." Schiffer pointed at the women. "And what do they think?"

  "They don't dare go out. They're scared. Allah cannot allow this. The neighborhood is accursed! Azrael, the angel of death, is upon us!"

  The Cipher smiled, gave the man a friendly tap on the back and pointed at the door. "Steady, now… you're finally starting to sound human…"

  They went out into the corridor. Paul followed them, closing the planks over the machine hell. He had only just done so when he heard a stifled groan. Schiffer had just rammed Tanoi up against the piping.

  "Who's killing the girls?"

  "I… I dunno."

  "Who are you covering for, you fucker?"

  Paul did not intervene. He sensed that Schiffer would not go any further. Just a final burst of rage, to save his honor.

  Tanoi did not answer; his eyes were popping out of their orbits.

  The Cipher released his grip, letting him get his breath back beneath the bare bulb, which was swinging like a hypnotist's pendulum. Then he murmured: "You keep all this under your hat, Tanoi. Not a word about our little visit to anyone."

  The sweatshop manager looked up at Schiffer. He had already recovered his servile expression. "My hat has always been in place. Inspector."

  35

  The second victim, Ruya Berkes, had worked not in a sweatshop but from her home at 58 Rue d'Enghien. She used to hand-stitch the linings of coats, whi
ch she then delivered to the Gozar Halman fur warehouse, at 77 Rue Sainte-Cécile, a road perpendicular to Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière. They could have started with the woman's apartment, but Schiffer decided to go straight to see her employer, whom he had apparently known for some time.

  As he drove in silence, Paul savored his return to fresh air. But he was also dreading fresh revelations. He saw the shop windows begin to darken, weighed down with brown materials and languid folds, as the car moved away from Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis and Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin. In each store, the fabrics and cloths were being replaced by skins and furs.

  He turned right, onto Rue Sainte-Cécile.

  Schiffer pulled at his arm. They had arrived at number 77.

  This time, Paul was expecting a sewer full of flayed skin, cages clotted with blood, the stench of dead meat. What he found was a little courtyard, full of light and flowers, whose paving stones looked as if they had been polished by the morning mist. The two officers crossed to the far side, to a building dotted with barred windows, which was the only edifice resembling an industrial warehouse.

  "I'm warning you," Schiffer said as he went through the door. "Gozar Halman is a Tansu fanatic."

  "Who's that A soccer player?"

  The policeman sniggered. They went up a staircase of gray wood.

  "Tansu tiller is the former prime minister of Turkey. A degree at Harvard, international diplomacy, minister of foreign affairs, and then head of the government. A model career."

  Paul's response was blasé. "A typical career for a politician.”

  “Except that Tansu tiller is a woman."

  They reached the second floor. Each landing was as vast and dark as a chapel. Paul remarked, "There can't be that many Turkish men who take a woman as their role model."

  The Cipher burst out laughing. "Really, if you didn't exist, then someone would have to invent you. Gozar is a woman! She's a teyze, a fairy godmother in every sense of the term. She watches over her brothers, her nephews, her cousins and her workers. She takes care of getting them work permits. She sends people to renovate their hovels. She sends their parcels and money orders for them. And then she gives out bribes to the cops so that they will leave them alone. She's a slave driver, but a benevolent one."

  Third floor. Halman's warehouse was a large room with a parquet floor that had been painted gray, scattered with pieces of Styrofoam and crumpled papers. In the middle, planks laid on trestles acted as counters. On them lay piles of cardboard boxes; acrylic shopping bags; pink plastic bags from the local discount store: protective bags for suits, from which some men were removing coats, jackets and collars, examining and then smoothing them out, checking their linings, and finally putting them on hangers suspended from gantries. In front of them, women dressed in head scarves and long skirts, with dark rugged faces, seemed to be wearily awaiting their verdict.

  A glazed mezzanine, veiled by a white curtain, overlooked the area an ideal position to supervise the workplace. Without hesitating, or saying a word to anyone, Schiffer seized the banister and started climbing the steep stairs that led to the platform.

  At the top, they had to confront a barrier of plants before entering an attic room, which was almost as large as the space beneath it. Windows edged with curtains looked out over a landscape of slate and zinc-the rooftops of Paris.

  Despite its dimensions, the workshop's décor made it look more like a boudoir from the 1900s. Paul went inside, drinking in every detail. Doilies protected the modern equipment-computer, stereo, television and sat under the framed photos, glass knickknacks and huge dolls. Everything was drowning in acres of lace. The walls were decorated with tourist posters, singing the praises of Istanbul. Small, brightly colored rugs were hung up like tapestries. Paper flags of Turkey, dotted around all over the place, echoed the postcards that were pinned up in groups on the wooden pillars that supported the roof.

  A solid oak desk, covered with a leather blotter, took up the right of the room, leaving the center to a green velvet divan standing on a huge rug. Nobody was there.

  Schiffer headed toward an opening hidden behind a bead curtain and cooed, "My princess, it's me, Schiffer. There's no need to doll yourself up."

  The only reply was silence. Paul advanced and took a closer look at the photos. In each of them, a short-haired, quite attractive redhead was smiling in the company of a famous president: Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, François Mitterrand. This was presumably Tansu cater.

  A rustling sound made him turn his head. The bead curtain opened to reveal the double of the woman in the photos, in person, but even larger than life.

  Gozar Halman had accentuated her resemblance to the politician, no doubt to give herself additional authority. Her black tunic and trousers, enlightened by just a few pieces of jewelry, were rather sober. The way she moved and walked was in the same register, expressing the haughty distance of a businesswoman. Her look seemed to draw an invisible line around her. The message was clear: any attempt at seduction was doomed from the start.

  But at the same time, her face told a different story. It was as broad and white as a Pierrot Lunaire, framed by red hair, with violently sparkling eyes. Gozar's eyelids were painted orange and dotted with spangles.

  "Schiffer," she said in a hoarse voice. "I know why you're here.-"At last, someone with their wits about them!"

  Looking distracted, she tidied away some papers on her desk. "I knew that they'd resurrect you sooner or later." She did not really have an accent -more of a light lilt that ran through each sentence, which she seemed to cultivate for its charm.

  Schiffer introduced them, temporarily abandoning his sneering tone. Paul sensed that he was going to play it straight with this woman. "What do you know about it all?" he asked at once.

  "Nothing. Less than nothing." She leaned over her desk for a few more seconds, then went to sit on the settee, slowly crossing her legs. "The neighborhood's scared," she whispered. "All sorts of rumors are flying round."

  "For example?"

  "Stories that contradict one another. I even heard that the killer was one of your men."

  "Or men?"

  "Yes, a policeman."

  Schiffer waved the idea away with the back of his hand. "Tell me about Ruya Berkes."

  Gozar was caressing the lace cloth covering the armrest of the settee. "She brought her articles every two days. She came here on January 6, 2002, but not on the eighth. That's all I can tell you."

  Schiffer took out his notepad and pretended to read it. Paul sensed that he was just trying to keep his countenance. This woman was clearly a match for him.

  "Ruya was the killer's second victim," he went on, eyes still on his notes. "The body was found on January 10."

  "God save her soul." Her fingers were fidgeting with the lace. "But it's none of my business."

  "It's everyone's business now. And I need information."

  The tension was mounting, but Paul detected a strange familiarity in their exchange. A complicity between fire and ice that had nothing to do with this investigation.

  "I have nothing to say" she repeated. "The neighborhood will close in around this affair. As it always does."

  Her words, voice and tone made Paul observe her more closely. She was fixing her dark eyes, topped with red gilt, on the Cipher. They made him think of strips of chocolate filled with orange rind. But, more importantly, he suddenly understood the truth of the situation: Gozar Halman was the Turkish woman whom Schiffer had almost married. What had happened? Why had it fallen through?

  The fur seller lit a cigarette. A long languid drag of blue smoke. "What do you want to know?"

  "When did she deliver her coats?"

  At the end of the day"

  "Alone?"

  "Yes, always alone."

  "Do you know which way she came?"

  "Via Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière. At that time, the streets are crowded, if that's your next question."

  Schiffer turned to generalities. "When did R
uya Berkes arrive in Paris?"

  “May 2001. Haven't you seen Marius?"

  He ignored the question. "What sort of woman was she?"

  "A peasant. But she had also lived in the city"

  " Adana?"

  "First Gaziantep, then Adana."

  Schiffer leaned over. He seemed interested by this detail. "She came from Gaziantep?"

  "Yes, I think so."

  He was pacing round the room, his fingers idling over the knickknacks. "Was she literate?"

  "No, but she was modern. Not a slave of tradition."

  "Did she go out in Paris? Go for walks? Go out to nightclubs?"

  "I said modern, not loose. She was a Muslim. You know as well as I do what that means. Anyway she didn't speak a word of French.”

  “How did she dress?"

  “As a Westerner," she said, her voice rising. "Schiffer, what are you after?"

  "I'm trying to work out how the killer jumped her. It isn't easy to approach a girl who never goes out, never speaks to anyone and has no leisure activities."

  His questions were leading nowhere. They were the same as an hour before, and were eliciting the same inevitable answers. Paul stood in front of the bay window, looking over the courtyard, and drew aside the curtain. The Turks were still working away; money was changing hands, above furs that were curled up like sleeping animals.

  Behind him, Schiffer's voice pressed on: "What was Ruya's state of mind?"

  "Like all the others: 'My body is here; my heart is back there.' All she wanted to do was to go home, get married and have children. She was here in transit. The daily round of a worker ant, stuck in front of her sewing machine, sharing a two-room apartment with two other women."

  "I want to question her roommates…"

  Paul stopped listening and observed the comings and goings downstairs. These exchanges were like bartering, an ancestral ritual. The Cipher's voice broke into his mind once more.

  "And what do you think about the murderer?"

  There was a long enough silence to make Paul turn back toward the room.

  Gozar had stood up and was now staring out of the window at the rooftops. Without moving, she murmured, "I think it is more… political." Schiffer went over to her. "What do you mean?"