Arab Jazz (27 page)

“How about another of those Godzwills?”

“Not just yet, Raymond. Not just yet.”

34

Avenue C, Alphabet City, Manhattan. Thirteen days earlier.

Susan is alone, smoking a joint by the window. She’s thinking about the girl she doesn’t know, but over whom she has the power of life and death. She doesn’t feel anything. Something needs to be done, and she’s going to do it. That’s what it boils down to. But this is no trivial thing.

DEATH

She’s been expecting this first murder, not that she’d ever thought about it. The act itself does not interest her. Apart from anything else, it’s going to happen thousands of miles away. But the sense of power it gives her . . . It’s particular, new, reminds her of the Godzwill experience. Brings her to the level of the wicked God under whose glaring eyes she grew up. She comes to the sudden realization that her mother died when she was roughly the same age as this Laura. There’s a link. The girl’s blood for the blood her mother was denied when her father said no to the transfusion. She remembers the day when she discovered the medical file with James. They were nine and a half. And she thinks back to what they promised one another after all those tears: no more believing in Jehovah; celebrating their birthdays in secret; never being apart; taking revenge on their father and on the organization.

A tear runs down her cheek. Whether she’s sad or happy she’s not sure, but she does feel alive. More alive than ever. Nancy, in her strange Inuit accent, often used to talk of soul eaters with a mixture of fear and respect.

POWER

Throughout those years she hated her father for killing her mother out of obedience to Jehovah. Now, as she is about to push the green button that will seal Laura’s fate, she finally understands. It was from this first murder that he drew all his strength. The man who had devoted his life to hunting down “demons” had become one himself at the precise moment he told the doctor that his faith prohibited him from introducing the blood of another human into his wife’s body. Eternal salvation up there instead of life down here. It was that gesture that transformed him and made him into a missionary in a league of his own, bringing him to the attention of the Governing Body. It was thanks to this inaugural murder that he became the strange being who was able to present his best side to the Inuits, managing to touch them and convert them at the same time as hating them as much as he did. This was how he had worked his way to the very top of the organization.

She still hates him so much. And yet she feels close to him, very close. On her telephone screen there’s a number starting 01133, the dialing code for international calls to France. She takes one last toke, stubs out the joint, checks her watch, works out that it’s 2:00 a.m. over there, and presses the green button. After the fourth ring someone picks up.

“Hi, Aïssa, it’s Susan. I’m afraid we’ve got a serious problem and I need your help to fix it—how should I say?—terminally . . .”

“Hi, Susan. Sure. Tell me what’s going on.”

Five minutes later, she pours herself a glass of 7 Up and breathes in slowly. She’s been waiting for this moment her whole life. She’s going to call James and Dov and tell them to meet her at the Starbucks on the First Avenue Loop. She’s really craving a brownie and a frappuccino. In their company. She’s happier than she’s ever been.

35

Ahmed has dropped in at home to take a shower and change before meeting up with Rachel. Oh, and Jean too. Fernanda is sunbathing in front of her lodge. She waves him over.

“Monsieur Taroudant, there’s a young man here to see you. He’s waiting for you up on the landing.”

“I’m not expecting anyone . . .”

“I’ve seen him before; he came last autumn. Your cousin if I remember rightly.”

“Mohamed . . . Ah, okay . . . Thank you.”

He’d totally forgotten about the letter where his cousin had told him he’d be back in Paris for the summer. When was it again? Yesterday—it only got here yesterday . . . He didn’t hang around! What am I going to do with him? As he comes out of the elevator he sees Mohamed wandering down the corridor wearing jeans and a flower-print T-shirt, and greets him with a smile and a hug.

Ten minutes later, with a coffee in front of them, Mohamed fills him in on the past eight months. He settled in well to life in Bordeaux, and the year went by without any trouble. He likes France a lot, he feels calm, far away from family stuff. He breathes in. Only one thing is eating away at him: his mother, Ourida, cannot understand why he doesn’t want to return home. However much he tells her he wants to get to know Paris she doesn’t buy it, and she’s decided to find him a wife—letting him live his life across the sea without a ball and chain is out of the question. Everyone knows what happens in the land of the
nasara
, the “Nazarenes.” You get a degree, a Master’s, and then, once you’re settled, you marry a nice French girl and you’re never seen again. Another one lost . . . Ahmed listens but keeps one eye on the time. Something doesn’t stack up in his cousin’s tale. Not that it matters much for the moment. But he’s got to leave in fifteen minutes and he needs to explain to Mohamed how his life of introspection has been suddenly and radically shaken up.

“Listen, something major has happened: my neighbor upstairs was murdered. Laura. Remember I used to look after her orchids?”

“The air hostess who was in love with you?”

Ahmed’s face hardens.

“In love with me? Well . . . Maybe, yeah. How did you know that, anyway?”

“It was obvious to everyone except you . . . Even the concierge knew—we spoke about it once. Laura . . . That’s sad. She was a nice girl, no doubt about it. Why did they kill her? Have they found the murderer?”

“They don’t know why and they haven’t found who did it. You know, I should have been the prime suspect—I had keys to her place—but the two officers on the case seemed to realize that it couldn’t have been me. I don’t know, something strange happened when we met. Then there’s Rachel . . . Basically I’ve got to go and see them now. I remembered something that Laura said to me. I’ve got to tell them. I’ve decided to get involved in the whole thing. To help them find the killer. I can’t go back to how I was before. If I hadn’t been sleepwalking through life, Laura would still be alive, you see what I’m saying? Now listen, right—being with me now is dangerous. All the more so because I’ve got this bad feeling that some people in the neighborhood want to do me harm. They’re mixed up in this murder in one way or another and they want it to look like I’m the main culprit. Dead or alive. It’s properly dangerous, Mohamed—do you understand? I’m really happy to see you, but it’s not wise for you to stay here . . .”

Clearly very moved, Mohamed grabs Ahmed by the arm.

“I’m here for you, cousin. When the going’s good I’m with you—same when it gets bad. Your enemies will find me at your side if they come for you.”

He breaks into a smile.

“So Rachel, hey?”

The terrace at MK2 is jam-packed so Jean and Rachel have settled inside at the back. Ahmed sits down without a word. Rachel looks up. She seems somber, very somber, distressed. Then his presence fully dawns on her and she breaks into a big smile which dispels all his anguish, all that’s bad. Ahmed’s heart is flooded by her. New, fresh blood courses through his veins. One word is imprinted on his soul and it contains all the love in the world.

RA-CHE-LÉ.

Jean eventually pipes up. His expression bittersweet. He can’t help but feel jealous, resentful of at least part of their happiness. And then he thinks of Léna who he’ll be seeing in two hours, smiles, pulls himself together, and gets on with his job.

“Ahmed . . . so, Ahmed. We don’t have much time. Everything’s gathering speed, taking shape, and backing away all at the same time. You had something important to tell us?”

Ahmed’s smile loses some of its intensity but doesn’t disappear altogether.

“Yeah, I’ll be quick . . .”

In as few words as possible he recounts the conversation he had with Laura ten days before. Jean takes notes.

“Why didn’t you tell us yesterday?”

“I didn’t think of it yesterday. My head was still all over the place. It came back to me this morning and I called Rachel—sorry, Lieutenant Kupferstein—immediately to tell her.”

“It’s okay, you can call me Rachel, it’s no problem.”

That smile again. Jean leaves it at that and is getting ready to ask his next question when his colleague’s telephone rings.

“Hello . . . Who have you spoken to? . . . No, he didn’t pass on the message. What exactly did he say? . . . Okay, thank you,
commissaire
.”

She turns to Hamelot.

“That was Jeanteau, the
commissaire
in Niort. Laura’s father has disappeared. And something else weird has happened: my cell phone was going straight to voicemail, apparently, so Jeanteau called the Bunker and Meyer picked up. As soon as he said that the suspect had gotten away, Le Gros blurted out ‘Vignola!’”

Rachel pauses and Jean looks stunned.

“What the fuck? How could Meyer have known about that? We’re the only people who know, and we only found out two hours ago!”

He turns to Ahmed and, for the very first time, talks to him like a police officer interrogating a suspect.

“Did you tell anyone else? Who are you talking to apart from us? Do you know anyone else from the police?”

Jean’s tone is threatening. Ahmed’s face closes right up—Rachel can sense him disappearing far away, quickly. She tries to calms things down with a voice that’s at once gentle and firm.

“Jean, if Ahmed hadn’t called me, we wouldn’t have had any reason to suspect Vignola. Ahmed, there’s just one thing I need to be sure about: no one else besides us knows about the conversation between Laura and you, right?”

Ahmed swallows hard, takes a deep breath. He looks at Jean.

“It’s fine, I get it; it’s normal for you to ask me this. No, I didn’t tell anyone else. I didn’t say anything to Monsieur Paul when I saw him this morning, nor to Sam, not even to my cousin Mohamed who rolled in from Bordeaux this morning for the summer. As for Laura, apart from me there’s a chance she might have told Bintou and Aïcha, but I don’t know, I don’t think so. She was more the sort of person who’d want to protect them rather than seek protection from them.”

Rachel cuts in.

“Sam? Hey, that reminds me—Sam told us about your visit this morning . . .”

“Of course . . . I bet he tried to make you think that I’m crazy enough to kill Laura . . . That was the worst haircut of my life. He stalked around me, clippers in hand, and tried to convince me that I could be the killer. He really reckons he’s a big shot. And he really takes me for an idiot.”

Jean again.

“So Sam wants to pin you as the killer. Why?”

“I don’t know. Weird stuff’s being going on in the neighborhood the last few days. I could feel it even before Laura’s death. I think there’s a link between Sam and Moktar. Might seem really strange to you, you might think I’m a bit nuts, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But nutcases can sense this sort of stuff . . . Nothing more to it than that: just sensing stuff.”

“Moktar. 75-Zorro-19 . . .”

“Moktar became a Salafist after they sent him to the
bled
. After he was forced to give up on his love . . . I bumped into him in the street yesterday. He insulted me, said I stank of white man. But it has been years since we’ve said a word to each other. Not since Maison Blanche, to be exact.”

“Maison Blanche?”

“Yeah, we were admitted there at the same time, but not for the same reasons. I can’t work out why he started on me for no reason five years later, even though we see each other once or twice a month, around and about, without saying a word. After a few yards, I turned around and he was gone. I’m pretty sure he went into Sam’s . . . There you have it, for what it’s worth . . . A lunatic’s intuition.”

Rachel looks at Jean.

“That squares up with the girls’ story about how the former members of 75-Zorro-19 met up at Sam’s in the middle of the night three days before the murder . . .”

She turns to Ahmed, any trace of a smile vanished.

“You didn’t hear anything—is that right?”

Without waiting for a response, Jean gets up to go and pay. Rachel stands up, sliding away from the bench, but a lot more slowly.

“Can I call you again tonight, from a pay phone? That wouldn’t bug you?”

Rachel blushes, feels like she’s seventeen all over again.

“No, Ahmed, that wouldn’t bug me . . . Not at all. Call me at . . . eleven. Hopefully I’ll be finished by then. Hopefully. By the way, it’s not really any of my business, but . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Ever thought about getting yourself a cell phone?”

36

Raymond, still stuffed into his vest, is buzzing like he does after every murder. The
brocanteur
’s body lies slumped in the faintly ridiculous position common to most murder victims. The blade is wrapped up in a plastic bag—prints wiped down—ready to be tossed into the Seine, the last thing he needs to do before leaving Paris for Guebwiller in Alsace. They’ll be safe over there in the family stronghold while things calm down. They’ll stay there long enough for the old man to placate the furious Enkell. Raymond is particularly excited to get going: his brother promised him a Godzwill upon arrival, and not a moment before.

They slip through the half-open gate. Once they’re out in the street, Francis straightens up and takes a large gulp of air. And nearly chokes as he feels the steel of a gun barrel against the back of his neck. He can make out the languid smile in Aïssa Benamer’s voice.

“Off we go. The car’s just over there.”

It’s always difficult to accept when your number’s up. People try to grab on to anything they can . . .

“But Haqiqi . . . I was meant to deal with Haqiqi . . .”

“Ah, of course! Well, in the end I decided to take care of him myself. Seemed the logical thing to do. Right, are you coming? Or shall we do this here?”