Arab Jazz (23 page)

“Good morning, Lieutenant. Let me guess . . . You’re here about the murder of that girl—Laura—aren’t you? You said to yourselves, ‘Let’s go and pay the barber a visit, because barbers always know what’s going on.’ Am I wrong?”

“No, that’s spot-on, absolutely spot-on.”

Rachel keeps her distance. Textbook stuff: let the Breton question the Jew. Log every detail, every reaction. Sam plays his role as the obliging, slightly bragging Sephardi down to a T, like a well-oiled machine. But all it takes is the blink of an eye, a tic—the shrug of a shoulder, the index finger scratching the temple, the thumb coming down to wrap itself around the belt—to alert the police officer. Then it’s her turn to pretend she hasn’t seen anything . . . As she flicks between observing and thinking, her colleague fills the silence.

“So, what can you tell us about Laura Vignola?”

“A beautiful young lady, Lieutenant, in all honesty. I used to see her walking past the shop with her pristine uniform and her little wheelie suitcase. A straightforward girl, who used to take the RER to get to work. Except that her nine-to-five went on up in the sky. I couldn’t tell you anything else about her life. I cut men’s hair, let’s not forget. Old Jewish men, mostly. So a young goy woman . . . not really my department.”

Sam puts a bit too much into his pause. A real pause, like a concierge from a Simenon novel. Jean has no choice but to pretend to play along—one of the rules of the game.

“Anything at all, Sam? Even something seemingly insignificant: a throwaway comment from a customer, for example . . . At this stage, anything could be of help. And you do know everyone around here . . .”

Rachel watches him swell with pride. It always amazes her how far flattery can get you. Especially with really shady characters.

“Well, Lieutenant, I’m not one to sneak. But this . . . this involves someone close, someone who’s like a son to me. On top of that I know he’d never harm anyone. You’ll have met him already, I’m sure, Ahmed, and made up your own mind? A nice, gentle boy, but not always easy. His mother was a close friend of mine, you know. Poor lady . . . Her life hasn’t been a walk in the park. Right now she’s in the psychiatric hospital, all on her own . . . Very much on her own.”

Jean ups the ante.

“So, about Ahmed . . .”

“Ahmed also had a stint there. But that’s not what this is about. Listen, can I say something that stays between us; off the record?”

“Why off the record? If you have information about a murder, Sam, then you have an obligation to tell us.”

“It’s no big deal, just a story. Not proper information, as you say. It’s not an official testimony on Ahmed . . . No, I could never bring myself to do it. He’s like family, you understand?”

Jean glances at Rachel. She closes her eyes in agreement.

“Fine, go ahead.”

Sam smiles at Rachel.

“Once, a few months, ago, when he was in for his last haircut, Ahmed was sitting in this chair. Laura went past, air hostess outfit and all. He saw her in the mirror and his face went bizarre, as though he was in some sort of pain. I think he even said her name quietly under his breath—‘Laura, Laura’—but I might be wrong. You see . . . Nothing major, but I wanted to tell you, just in case. It’s funny—he was here just this morning. You must have bumped into him; he’d only been gone three minutes when you arrived.”

“Did he talk to you about Laura?”

“It was me who asked him how he was doing, what with the murder in the apartment upstairs. He didn’t say anything, but I got the feeling he was distressed, out of sorts. Quite right, I say . . . A crime like that, what a shock!”

“Yes, a shock indeed. Sam, you’ve known Ahmed for a long time . . . Do you think he’s capable of . . .”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant. He wouldn’t hurt a fly . . . Not in his normal state. But why did they bang him up, eh? I never got to the bottom of that. His mother, and then him . . . Something about that family . . .”

All the while Rachel has been examining the room. An object attracts her attention, a wrought-iron, art deco lamp topped with a turquoise bulb. She interrupts Sam’s rambling.

“Hey, that’s weird—I’ve been looking for a lamp just like that. May I ask where you found it?”

Having kept his cool until then, the barber can’t stop himself from pulling at the frayed collar of his lumberjack shirt with his index finger and thumb, lifting it up and letting it fall back down.

“Oh, er . . . I can’t really remember, I’ve had that for a while . . . Maybe . . . At marché aux Puces, must have been the flea market . . .” he says, pulling himself together. “Sorry, but I gave up bargain-hunting long ago, so I couldn’t tell you how to find another one like it . . . Forget what I told you,” he says, turning back to Jean. “It was just a random memory. Poor Ahmed would never be capable of committing such a crime. I hope you find the killer, truly. A thing like that in the neighborhood—it’s horrible.”

“Horrible, indeed. Have a good day, Sam. We may call again. And if by chance you remember anything else . . .”

“Have a good day yourselves.
Shabbat shalom
, Inspecteur.”

The barber’s ritual farewell really grates on Rachel’s nerves. With one foot still in the shop, she changes her mind and pokes her head back in through the half-open door.

“By the way, Sam, we’ve been ‘lieutenants’ since 1995. Columbo’s the only person who still gets called ‘inspecteur’.
Shabbat shalom!
”

As soon as they’ve rounded the corner of the street, Jean turns to his colleague.

“That two-faced bastard! What was all that crap about Ahmed? What’s he trying to make us think?”

“He’s simply trying to serve us up a suspect on a plate. The question is why. What’s he covering up? What’s he hiding from us? And what did the girls not tell me? We can’t wait till tonight to find out. It’s quarter to twelve—I’m meeting the ex–Jehovah’s Witness at three. I’ll call them and try to see them as soon as possible. I’ll go alone: better that way, I think.”

“No problem. As for Ahmed, can we ignore Sam’s accusation, even if it is hazy?”

“You’re seeing his psychoanalyst this evening, aren’t you? We’ll work out what to do depending on what he says. For the moment, let’s not tire ourselves out with a sketchy lead. The further we get, the more I’m thinking this is a race against the clock.”

Rachel is about to fish out her cell when Jean interrupts her.

“Hold on, I almost forgot: can you explain why you asked him about his lamp? It really threw him, but I didn’t have a clue what you were going on about . . .”

“I saw the same one last night on my way home. At that weirdo’s second-hand shop.”

Jean looks confused.

“Sorry, let me explain. By the telephone booth where the crime was reported from, there’s a second-hand shop owned by some pervert . . .”

Rachel tells him about her visit to the
brocanteur
. “The more I think about it,” she finishes, “the more he reminds me of this serial molester I came across toward the end of my training. His way of speaking, his walk, his eyes. Everything about him screams pervert. He and Sam have the same art deco lamp. Not so much a freak coincidence as just plain freaky . . .”

“Definitely. That’s weird, I almost went in to take a look around the same shop this morning.” He stops, a darkness crossing his face. “Not too bright of me, to be honest. I parked right in front of the telephone, just long enough to smoke a cigarette and get a feel for the area, the atmosphere. I got the impression that there were two guys inside the shop. The first one was massive and cagey, and disappeared as soon as he saw me. The other must have been your
brocanteur
. He took his time getting a good look at me. He’ll be on the alert now after our two visits. Léna, who comes across her fair share of perverts, has told me a few times that they’re like schizophrenics: they can sense everything.”

“Well, if Léna says so!”

“Yeah, yeah, okay! Whatever, at this stage we haven’t gotten any evidence to charge either him or Sam. Just a tip-off that may not hold water. Let’s touch base after you’ve seen your Jehovah’s Witness.”

“Ex–Jehovah’s Witness!”

“Of course, ex– . . .”

28

Aïssa Benamer is alone. Crew cut, green eyes, broad wrestler’s shoulders, off-white Lacoste polo shirt, impeccably pressed, pleated beige pants from the Gap. He’s sitting with his legs outstretched, his sky-blue Timberland boat shoes crossed on his empty desk. By all appearances, an ex-Phalangist militiaman from Lebanon turned sailing club manager in the Vendée, or a former Israeli army officer who has reinvented himself as the head of security at a provincial shopping center. But no. Benamer was born to peaceable Kabyle hoteliers from Saint-Chamond. He joined the police in 1983 (the year of the pro-equality, anti-racism march that he followed on the television absentmindedly and without the least interest despite his brother, Lounès, being one of the spokesmen) after securing his law degree from Université Lyon 3 and completing his course at police training college. Nowadays, as
commissaire central adjoint
for the eighteenth arrondissement, he’s not far from the top.

But he is aiming for something more than that. Benamer is too scornful of other people to take any interest in honors. Or in order, or goodness. Or even in money. No, his reason for being is power. To hold it and wield it in all its forms. As chance would have it, his first posting meant serving under Frédéric Enkell, who immediately recognized in him the disciple he had always hoped for. Despite being a devout atheist, Enkell was, in his own way, a mystic. For him nothingness was evil. After observing him for three months, the Alsatian arranged for the young Kabyle to commit a fatal blunder, just so he could cover it up. This murderous initiation was the perfect rite of passage: it gave the promising pupil a taste for blood and, more importantly, for the unpunished crime, a field in which Enkell had been quite outstanding for the past twenty-five years (twenty of which with Benamer by his side), trafficking and murdering away without even the stirrings of an internal inquiry. All the while Enkell never stopped climbing the ranks with every new posting, each one in a challenging neighborhood. From Aulnay-sous-Bois to the fifteenth arrondissement in Marseilles, from Vénissieux in Lyon to the eighteenth in Paris. Benamer had followed him everywhere, his apprentice in every department of the criminal world: procuring; dealing stolen goods; trading sketchy favors; trafficking arms; drugs; blackmail . . . No gaps in their repertoire. Their strength? Always knowing when to pull the plug and take out the two or three civilians (never more) who had acted as their middlemen. And, every time trouble really started brewing, Enkell always managed to nip any investigations in the bud. Benamer didn’t know who was protecting him or why. His guess was that it had something to do with his role in liquidating certain people on request during the rather turbulent period straddling the Giscard and Mitterrand presidencies, just before he met Enkell. It didn’t really matter: sometimes it was no bad thing to be in the dark about the odd detail.

Currently, and for the first time, a sort of evil eye is on them. It started with the Vignola girl seeing something she ought not to have seen, which forced them to silence her for good. Not really the evil eye as it all comes down to the fact that they strayed from their usual prudence by agreeing to let a colleague in on their enterprise. Agreeing is not the right word. Francis Meyer, known as “Le Gros” on account of his great fatness, twisted their arm. He had some very precise information relating to a big part of the duo’s activities over the past fifteen years or so. Information that he can’t have gleaned by himself. Enkell knew Meyer’s father by reputation. “Handsome Roger” had been mixed up in every murky affair in the Parisian police from 1942 to 1973 and, in spite of his ninety years of age, he continued to ensure his son enjoyed considerable degrees of protection. So there was no chance of getting rid of the killjoy. And, in fairness, the business venture Le Gros brought them via Sam Aboulafia, a Jewish barber in the nineteenth, was gold dust. From the start, Enkell had been clear about the rules of the game: eliminating any nonpolice accomplices who could link it back to them, starting with Sam. Le Gros loved the idea. With the exception of the deviant Jehovah’s Witness, this deal involved a bunch of Arabs and Jews who he’d be delighted to take out—or at least have someone else take out. Because Francis Meyer had “forgotten” to warn Enkell and Benamer about one detail: he was in the habit of entrusting such matters to his younger brother, Raymond, who had unjustly failed his police entrance examination despite his evident skills in handling bladed weapons. The problem was that Raymond was extremely partial to every type of drug. And his big brother, who never refused him anything, had provided him with a few of the pretty blue pills that were to make them their fortune. The result? While the plan had been to make Laura disappear without a trace, Raymond—under the influence of Godzwill—had turned the young woman’s murder into a veritable work of conceptual art. And this made it impossible to hush up.

The previous day, standing among the crowds of tourists at Sacré-Coeur, confronting a livid Enkell, who had summoned him after the discovery of the grotesque theatrics surrounding the air hostess’s corpse, Le Gros seemed totally unfazed: “It gives him such pleasure, and anyway, it’s up to him to take care of it . . . He’s a guy that likes to make himself useful.” The
commissaire central
had thought it wise not to respond, and instead swore to himself that, however well-protected they might be, he would skin the two brothers alive when the time was right. He then charged his right-hand man with the task of “sorting out this fucking mess.”

Sorting out this fucking mess. Benamer takes a deep breath and recaps. The delivery to Holland had been successfully completed by Ruben, who had then gone to collect the latest batch from Vignola’s house in Niort before stashing it at the kosher products warehouse on boulevard MacDonald. A warehouse which connects to another—much more secret—via a door which only he and Enkell know exists, and to which only they have the key. If need be, they will be able to dissolve the pills in a few minutes and with the utmost discretion. As things stand, Ruben and his Hasidic pals are operational. Blissfully ignorant, not least because they’re convinced that the boxes contain tefillin, mezuzoth, and Torah scrolls. They could transport anything, with their beards, sidelocks, and hats placing them beyond all suspicion. Who would suspect a bumbling old rabbi? Anyway, the American woman has opened a new distribution network in Antwerp. Until things calm down, retail will have to be limited to Belgium and Holland. As for Paris, they’ll have to wait and see. Benamer’s plan had been to take out Vignola, Sam, and Haqiqi in one. Not such a sensible idea now thanks to the delirious antics of Meyer’s brother, which have served to put both Jews and Muslims in the spotlight, not to mention the Jehovah’s Witnesses, given the victim’s identity. Sam and Haqiqi can wait—nothing substantial links them to Laura. Plus, without them there’s no way of getting business back on track after this upset: the Jewish barber controls Ruben and the Hasidic mules; the Salafist preacher manages the network of dealers. Not so for Vignola, who’s pretty much no use to anyone anymore, and he wouldn’t last an hour and a half across the table from Rachel in the interrogation room. So he’ll need to be quietly taken out of the equation as soon as he arrived in Paris the next day.