Arab Jazz (31 page)

Rébecca breaks down in tears, eight hours away in the distance. Over there where night has now fallen. Rachel checks her watch. Time to wrap up the conversation.

“Rébecca, thank you so, so much. I’m sorry for making you relive all that.”

“No, Rachel, thank
you
.”

The buzzer goes. It’s Jean and the brothers. The next phase is starting.

41

Rue Eugène-Jumin. Benamer and Enkell are on autopilot. A couple of telephone calls to pin down their next two victims, both of them at their place of work. Heads or tails? Heads says it’s Sam. The street is deserted. The door to the salon is half-open—trusting as ever. The barber is sitting in the Skaï chair used by his clients, smoking one of his cigarillos, facing the mirror in which he sees the two policemen make their entrance.

“You didn’t hang around . . .”

Benamer cannot get over the man’s stupidity, his blind faith. The same kind their friend the
brocanteur
showed the Meyer brothers. He wants to wipe that smug smile right off Sam’s face, that misplaced calm assurance.

“Yes, and as we’re tired, we’ll do it quickly. Don’t worry: we won’t make you suffer.”

Sam’s hand twitches toward the drawer in search of some potential means of defending himself.

“Don’t move. Don’t turn around. Keep your beak shut. I’ll do it very neatly, here in the back of your neck. You won’t feel a thing. And I will take comfort from the fact that I am liberating this arrondissement of your inane prattling. It’ll feel like I’ve given something back to society. For as long as I’ve had to put up with your endless, self-satisfied bullshit, I’ve promised myself that when I get around to bumping you off, I’d make you a little speech. Just to let you know how much you’ve pissed me off. Just to let you know that whenever I thought I couldn’t bear you any longer, I found a way to tolerate you, to listen to you, to pretend that I found you intelligent—and that was by imagining all the different ways I might kill you. And in the end, it was the last time, at that couscous restaurant, that I thought up this wonderfully simple death—the one you’re now due. A bullet in the back of the neck. Just . . . a bullet . . . in the back . . . of the neck. See how fucking tedious it is to have to sit through a spiel that you really, really don’t want to hear? Right, I’m done—even I’m getting bored now. I can’t even be bothered to tell you how we’re going to do Haqiqi once we’re finished here.”

Enkell is at the entrance, motionless, his Glock leveled at the barber while Benamer screws the silencer onto his Beretta. Pinned to his seat and with fat beads of sweat running down his face, Sam is reeling off a string of incomprehensible words in a low voice. Silencer attached, the
commissaire adjoint
approaches, cocking an ear.

“Goodness me, you’re praying—so you really are religious after all.”

He lifts the barrel to the back of Sam’s neck at a forty-five degree angle. Standing still, he takes a second to listen to the words spouting from the barber’s mouth.

Chma, Israel, Adonai Elo-henou, Ado-nai Ehad’ Baroukh chem kevod malkouto le’olam vaed

Pop.

Benamer takes off the silencer pensively and turns toward Enkell.

“You find out what a man is like just before he meets his end . . . As it turns out, Sam was a true believer. I’d never have thought it.”

“Okay, shall we?”

It’s even quicker with Haqiqi. Benamer has no intention of making even the shortest of speeches. Just wants to finish him off. Unlike with Sam, the imam realizes right away why the policemen are there. He barely has time to fill his lungs with air to scream before he finds himself gripped by the hair and dragged backward, his throat uncovered and immediately slit by Benamer’s Laguiole. From the door, Enkell draws the service to a close.

“Right then, let’s get some sleep. Our business meeting at Charles de Gaulle is in less than five hours.”

42

Rachel’s studio apartment has never been so packed. Jean, Bintou, Aïcha, Ruben, Mourad, and Alpha. The boys have relayed their account of the evening at Sam’s to the two lieutenants. They’ll have to do it again at the police station, and once again for the
juge d’instruction
. Luckily Jean came in a police car. He’ll take the boys to the Bunker, with Rachel following on her scooter. She takes out ten dollars to pay for a taxi for the girls. Aïcha thinks about refusing, but tucks the bill into the bag slung around her shoulder. They’re about to set off when Ruben clears his throat.

“There’s one more thing I’ve got to tell you. Or show you, more like.”

He opens his hand and presents the two detectives with a pill, a beautiful sky-blue in color.

“I’ve no idea how or why, but I really think this is why Laura was killed.”

Jean grabs hold of the pill.

“What is it? Some type of ecstasy?”

“You could say that, but it’s super-powerful. A new type of drug. When you take one you feel like you’re God Himself.”

“And where’s it from, this pill? Did you buy it? Are you selling them?”

“Two months ago, Rabbi Seror assigned me a mission: to go to Niort with a few other Hasids to pick up a load of tefillin, Torah scrolls, and mezuzoth blessed by the rebbe in Brooklyn.”

Rachel jumps with surprise.

“Niort? Are you sure?”

“Yeah—you couldn’t make a place like that up. It did seem strange, but you know, I didn’t question the rabbi’s instructions. Then when we got to the house where we were meant to pick up the stuff, there was this weird guy there. About sixty, I’d say. Really nervous. Quite blunt, but a good-looking man. I don’t know, it felt like something was up. He showed us the boxes that needed shifting. There were others nearby, one of them was open—I could see it contained piles of
Watchtower
, the Jehovah’s Witness magazine. I didn’t say anything. He just told us which boxes needed to be loaded in the back of the van and which needed to go by the door. When we stopped for a break on the motorway, I was left alone for a while. I opened one of the boxes nearest the back of the van, rummaged around inside and pulled out a plastic bag full of these pills. Since then we’ve done three more loads. The last batch is in a kosher goods warehouse not far from here, near porte de la Villette. I can take you there.”

Jean and Rachel are dumbfounded. All of a sudden Laura’s murder seems charged with a totally different meaning. They need to get to the police station as fast as they can, take down the statements, inform Mercator and arrange for a raid on the warehouse.

43

Mohamed and Ahmed have done a lot of talking and a lot of smoking. And now they’re studying the Glock. This all came about in peculiarly simple fashion. On his way home from meeting Rachel and Jean at MK2 on the quai de Seine, Ahmed took a detour via Monsieur Paul’s. He asked Ahmed how everything had gone since the morning. After hearing the bit about his trip to Sam’s, the old bookseller had paused for a while, a worried expression on his face. Then he had dug around in the bottom drawer of his desk and brought out the revolver.

“Take it—might come in handy.”

“Hang on, what are you doing with one of those?”

“Oh, I’ve got a customer to thank for it, a Serb. He left it for me as a deposit. Needn’t have bothered: a week later, he got himself shot by another Serb. Some sorry business from over there that caught up with him over here. Anyway, I decided to keep it, telling myself that this gun owed someone a life. And you’re the only person I know who needs protection.”

“But I don’t want to use it, plus I’ve never fired a gun in my life.”

“Of course, and I wouldn’t want to push you to do so. I’m not sure why, but I just don’t like the thought of you being unarmed against Sam, Moktar, and Co. Take it! It’ll sound strange to you coming from an old anarchist like me, but it’s got a mystical quality. This weapon . . . I’m not sure how to phrase it . . . It’ll do what’s required.”

Ahmed arrived back at his apartment—armed with the Glock, some cheese ravioli from Franprix, and a new cell phone from the SFR shop—to find Mohamed out for the count on the carpet. He lay down himself and nodded off in a matter of seconds. When he woke up, his cousin was standing on the balcony, smoking beneath the stars. At 11:00 p.m., Ahmed had—as agreed—called Rachel without really thinking about what he was going to say, and left his cell number on the voicemail belonging to the policewoman of his dreams.

In the dead of night, the two cousins contemplate the Glock and the future. Mohamed had spoken at length, and confided a straightforward secret in Ahmed: he didn’t want to go ahead with the marriage arranged by his mother because girls didn’t really do it for him. Simple as that. He had confessed to Ahmed that he’d known his uncle’s secret for years, and that he had no desire to live a lie in a sham marriage. His mother knew, no doubt about it. She knew her son, but she didn’t give a shit at all, as long as he agreed to play the game, to have children. Up to a point, Mohamed could see where she was coming from, but what he couldn’t bear was the fact that in the process she had no qualms whatsoever about bringing misery to an innocent young girl he would never love or truly satisfy. The cruelty of it disgusted him. All for status, honor, family, for the continuation of who knows what anyway . . .
Fuck!

His cousin seemed like a different person to Ahmed. And it delighted him. He never thought he could feel so close to a fake cousin from the
bled
. It reconnected him with that unknown part of himself, with that land of his forebears who maybe weren’t as far away as he’d imagined after all. Fate, with all its twists and turns, had just handed him the brother he had so longed for.

4:00 a.m. He can’t sleep. The heat is drawing him to the street. Ahmed drags his cousin, his brother, his kin outside for a midnight stroll. He hesitates about taking the gun. Then decides
why not!
But where will he put it? It’s so heavy . . . Mohamed is carrying a canvas bag slung over his shoulder. He knows how to shoot; he learned when he was younger from an army officer uncle who’d fought at Amgalla. He takes charge of the weapon. The two young men exit the building, breathe in the summer air and its promise of good fortune.

All quiet on rue Petit. They turn down rue Eugène-Jumin. Ahmed feels carefree, protected by the weapon in Mohamed-the-marksman’s bag. The barber shop sign can be seen twenty yards away. He’s no longer scared of evil Sam, not now. Something suddenly catches his attention: the door to the prayer room is slightly ajar. Complete darkness, thick with silence. He motions to his cousin to be quiet and keep watch. Mohamed slides his hand into the bag, cocks the pistol, puts his finger on the trigger, and nods at Ahmed, who pushes the prayer-room door open with his elbow and enters the total darkness within. He uses his cell to light up the room: carpet; prayer mats rolled up at the sides; empty shoe lockers, with the exception of one pair of Reeboks. A disquieting detail—an open Koran, the pages creased. The cell goes out so Ahmed presses the button again, shining it on the area around the holy book. A hand, a leg, a throat. Gaping open. A well-groomed beard. Haqiqi. He retreats, letting the door close quietly on itself. He takes a deep breath and, seized by a sudden impulse, marches his cousin, gun still raised, three doors further down. Another door slightly ajar. No point going in—he knows what he’ll find. A smile for Monsieur Paul, whose Glock has given him the courage to face the dead.

What about the living?

Back up to the apartment, treading lightly on the steps. Sitting at the table, an empty plate with traces of olive oil and pepper in front of them, Ahmed studies his telephone, hesitates a few seconds, then hits the green button. Rachel answers before he’s even had time to say “Hello.” This means that she hadn’t been able to call him back but had gone to the trouble of saving his number in her list of contacts. This simple fact fills him with joy.

“Ahmed? I couldn’t pick up earlier, but that’s not why you’re calling me so late, is it?”

“No. What does the word ‘confidence’ mean to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“If I tell you something now and ask you not to repeat it to anyone, does that mean anything? Or does your duty as a policewoman come first?”

“What is this ‘something’?”

“Something useful for you, for all of us, for Laura . . .”

“I can confirm that this conversation won’t go any further.”

“Go to rue Eugène-Jumin. The prayer room and the barber shop. Destinies have been rudely interrupted there. As for me, I’ve been at home with my cousin all evening. If you want to come by for some tea . . . You never know . . . Fine if it’s seven in the morning or five in the afternoon.”

44

Rachel hangs up. 5:15 a.m. She rereads Mourad’s statement while a few yards away Jean is questioning Ruben, and Kevin has just finished with Alpha. She gestures to her partner, who takes a few seconds out from his questioning to come over and join her.

“Taroudant just called me. He told me to go to rue Eugène-Jumin, to the prayer room and the barber shop. ‘Destinies have been rudely interrupted there’: those were his words.”

“And you’re thinking of going alone?”

“No, I’m taking Kevin with me.”

“Kevin . . .”

“Yes, Kevin. He’s done with Alpha, and besides, you have to organize the raid on the warehouse after Ruben’s statement.”

“That can wait. I’m coming with you. I’m not letting you risk your neck like this!”

“Hey listen, I’m a police officer just like you, aren’t I? Badly paid to risk my neck, same as you. It’s my lead so I’m going, I’ll take a look and secure the area. You and Mercator can make sure you get a warrant as quickly as possible to search the warehouse, and I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”

Rachel feels driven by something greater than her, something that makes her a bit harder with her colleague than she might have wanted. She appeases Jean by planting a little kiss on his right cheek.