Arab Jazz (5 page)

“There’s the obvious translation. But according to Ellroy, the meaning is more like ‘a twisted plan hatched by white guys’.”

“Monsieur Taroudant, perhaps we’ll have the pleasure of continuing this literary discussion some other time. As it happens, my colleague and I are here to ask you some questions.”

Rachel takes out her Oxford spiral notebook and her vintage orange pen complete with black cap. Ahmed pulls himself together and carries on the game of “what if.” What if this is a real interrogation? What if it’s already too late for pretending? He’s talking like one of the countless characters from one of the countless novels decorating his walls.

Starting with . . . “Is there anyone who can verify your whereabouts and provide an alibi?”

Precisely.

“No, no one.”

“We rang your buzzer at around 9:45 p.m. Why didn’t you answer?”

Ahmed holds up the small yellow box sitting on the hessian carpet next to the tired-looking futon.

“I sleep with ear plugs in.”

Jean looks at Rachel as if to say “let’s leave it for now”, and turns to Ahmed.

“Can we see the balcony?”

“I’ll open the blinds for you.”

A ’70s-style metal shutter; the slats painted white. Ahmed turns the handle. Bit by bit the balcony appears before the police officers’ eyes. Nothing but a flower pot with a white lily in it. Jean opens the glass door, steps outside, looks up, and turns back toward the dark-skinned Arab. His voice takes on a more insistent tone, his eyes narrowing.

“And did you go onto the balcony yesterday afternoon?”

A five-second silence in which Ahmed appears to be trying to piece together the events of the day before bit by bit.

“To be honest, I can’t really remember . . . I spent the day lying on the futon, reading, drinking green tea, coffee, eating crackers; so I must have gotten up and gone to the kitchen, plus a few trips to the toilet. I usually wake up early and take the opportunity to water my lily. It’s the best time for it because the soil is still cool. Yesterday morning . . . Yeah, I went out on the balcony at about 6:30. After that, I don’t know. As soon as I start reading I tend to lose track of what’s going on around me. Often it’s not till the end of the day, when I think about making dinner, that I become aware of certain things that have happened throughout the day in my semiconscious state.”

“Do you have a job, Monsieur Taroudant?”

“I’m on sick leave.”

“Since when?”

“Five years. I’ve been on disability benefits three and a half.”

“Do you mind me asking why you’re on disability benefits?”

“Depression.”

“Is that considered a disability?”

No response.

“Okay. . . . What was your job before?”

“Night watchman at a furniture warehouse.”

The two police officers exchange a knowing look. Rachel, with her big eyes, keeps things moving.

“Great, thanks for your cooperation. I’ve no doubt we’ll be paying you another visit. In the meantime, get in touch whenever.”

Ahmed wonders if he’s dreaming, but for a brief moment he detects in her eyes an invitation to call, whether he has reason to or not. She scribbles their contact details on a sheet of paper that she’s ripped out of her notebook and hands it to him. He slips it into his wallet.

“By the way, you’re not planning on traveling any time soon, are you?”

“I never leave the nineteenth arrondissement.”

“Perfect, well until further notice, stick to that.”

“Fear not.”

The officers bid him farewell with a nod and leave. Ahmed closes the door behind them. It’s all good—all part of the script. All he needs to do now is listen to a bit of jazz to channel the spirits of Pinkerton past. If he gets out of this he’ll write a book—that’s a promise. He’ll call it
Arab Jazz
. Ha! Shit, what’s going on—even cracking gags now?

As an air hostess, Laura often had to make stopovers in the United Arab Emirates. She hated the airport in Dubai, where she felt she became nothing more than a slab of meat on display in the eyes of the potbellied ex-Bedouins, Rolexes dripping casually from their wrists. She felt swallowed up by the shops in the tax-haven hypermarket. After her last trip there, she had brought Ahmed back a present for the first time: one of those tiny iPods, onto which she had uploaded her favorite music. Ahmed hasn’t touched it for three months. He digs it out, puts in the earphones, and hits the play button. Somehow there’s still a bit of battery left. The warm voice of Dinah Washington: “It’s Magic.” Deep down he feels a little doorway opening, one that has been hermetically sealed for so long he had forgotten it even existed. A doorway to tears. The effect of the voice, the music is magic. He weeps like a four-year-old. He thinks of his first memory—his mother taking him in her arms to console him after he’d been hit by a bigger boy. It’s the only image of her he has left. The only one. Perhaps the odd bit of tenderness had managed to survive the whirlpool of her madness. Maybe, but it left without a trace. How wonderful it was to let himself go to her. How wonderful it is to let himself go now, with this soft music filling his ears. Tears stream down his cheeks. Behind the singer’s voice those violins are so sweet, the backing vocals oozing . . . He is weeping freely now. He doesn’t know what’s come over him. Laura . . . Laura . . . What could I have done? Come now. Not the time for futile soul-searching. You will find the killer, and you will get your life back. And she will find peace. Finally. Now sleep. Dream!

With the volume turned right down, Ahmed closes his eyes and sinks into the world of Laura. Sleep. Thirty-six hours of sound left in the little gem.

4

Six floors below, Jean and Rachel come out of the elevator and find themselves face to face with the concierge. She is cleaning the windows of Building A, Laura and Ahmed’s block. Fernanda Vieira is a small, thin, energetic woman with a face like a porcelain doll. Two things betray her forty-five years: the crow’s feet at the corner of her jet-black eyes and the silvery strands that—either through carelessness or a remarkable display of vanity—streak through her raven-like hair. She usually wears a denim apron over the rest of her clothing. Today it’s protecting a pink gingham skirt and a white blouse that are in tune with the nostalgia that has gripped her since her alarm went off. During the blessed years of her childhood, each block of apartments had its own concierge, and those that made up this exclusive club—of which her mother before her was a member—seemed to Fernanda to be the guardians of world order. Later on she rebelled, but oh how she had admired her mother! This is what she talks about with the two police officers from the moment she spots them, as though a police inquiry were some form of group therapy.

The two officers don’t take offense, they just leave her to it. Things have to get going somehow.

“You know, I grew up not far from here. It’s like a different planet now. My mother was concierge at a beautiful old building on avenue des Buttes-Chaumont. Just opposite the park. My father was a plasterer. It was extraordinary for them, being here. You couldn’t imagine what Portugal was like back then. Ruthless nobles barely leaving a thing for the peasants to live on. My parents grew up in shacks with no running water, in complete poverty; only just had time to learn to read and write before being sent off to work in the fields at age nine. So to find themselves in a building shared by lawyers, doctors, dentists . . . getting tips at Christmas, being treated with respect . . .”

Fernanda stops short, deep in thought. Jean and Rachel, backs to the wall of the concierge’s lodge, say nothing, waiting for her. She emerges from her daydream, looks at them, seemingly astonished at their presence, and continues.

“And yet they were never happy. Never. They’d suffered too much to know how to make the most of life . . . It wasn’t a laugh a minute. I left home at sixteen. I dreamed of something different. I took every job going for someone without a degree: waitress, receptionist, telephone operator . . . Even worked as a dentist’s secretary. And then I got married. My husband found this job, which was perfect for a young couple. So having sworn I’d never be a concierge I found myself working for the local housing association! Less than a mile from where I grew up. Two years later, my husband Laurent ran off with Samia: an unattractive, charmless girl, but she knew how to hold on to a man once she’d set her sights on one. I knew her well—we’d been at school together. And I stayed here. It was my destiny . . . That’s how you’ve got to look at it. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this . . . I’m not usually like this. Since last night . . . what with Laura . . . My mind’s sort of all over the place.”

Rachel looks at her kindly.

“Tell us about her. Anything, just off the top of your head . . .”

“Off the top of my head . . . She was a nice girl, Laura. I liked her a lot. I’d have liked to get to know her better. That’s what you always say when it’s too late. It gave me a real shock, her death. And murdered like that! Who’d wish such a thing on her? You know, there are all sorts. In this job you get good at working out what people are like. Laura . . . she was one of the good ones. Always a kind word, a nod, a glance. I hoped she’d find a nice man. But no. I never saw any going up to her place. Not that I was keeping tabs or anything! I couldn’t bear it when my mother did that—always nosing around other people, making comments . . . But after someone’s been here six months or so you get a feel for who is going around to whose, and she’d been here for three years. I could look up the exact date in my records if you want. Speaking of men, it was obvious that she liked Taroudant. You know, the guy below her with the keys. But I don’t think he even realized. He lives in his own world; him and his books. He never sees anyone. I wonder how she talked him into looking after her orchids when she was away. Maybe because he likes plants too . . . Plus you’ve got to be pretty OCD to spray the right amount of water on those delicate flowers . . .”

“And apart from Monsieur Taroudant?”

“Apart from him she had three friends, girls from around here: Bintou, Aïcha, and Rébecca. You know, when Laura moved in here she lived a bit like a nun . . . She never left the house unless she was going to work, with her uniform and her wheelie suitcase. The only place she felt okay was at Onur’s, the kebab shop on the corner. She’d stay there for hours in the afternoon just reading her books. Must be said that it’s quiet there in the afternoon. Just a few thirsty tourists leaving parc de la Villette, and a couple of worn-out regulars watching those half-naked girls on Turkish TV channels as they sip their tea.”

Rachel takes over.

“Reading . . . Reading what?”

“What would I know? Books. Classics, I suppose. That’s how she got chatting to those girls—Rébecca was studying literature back then.”

“Would you say you knew them well, those girls?”

“They were friends of my daughter, Lourdes, at school. They lost touch after that. Lourdes trained to become a medical secretary. Rébecca, Bintou, and Aïcha went to lycée Bergson. Nowadays my daughter is married and lives down in Arpajon.”

“And the three friends—are they still in the neighborhood?”

“Just two of them. Rébecca disappeared suddenly three or four months ago, not long after she started wearing an ankle-length skirt and wig. Some new trend in the neighborhood . . . Anyway, some say she’s working as a waitress in New York, others that she married a rabbi from Enghien-les-Bains . . . I’ve got no idea. Bintou and Aïcha still live with their parents. They’re at college in Paris.”

“Can you give us their addresses?”

“Of course, they’re just around the corner, both in the same block at 23, rue Eugène-Jumin. But your best bet is just to go around to Onur’s. They go there every evening after classes to share an order of
frites-moutarde
. They’ve done that ever since they were small kids. Oh yes, there’s something else. I don’t know if it’s important, but I think Laura was angry at her parents. You know, where I’m from family is sacred. Well, I’ve already mentioned that things weren’t always rosy with my mother. After my father died she went back to Porto. She left us here—her four children—to go and live in a house that she’d built with my father. A life devoted entirely to saving money, leaving us to grow up in poverty. And all that to build a palace in Portugal that my father was never even able to enjoy. Idiotic! In spite of all that I still call my mom every Sunday evening, religiously. My siblings do too. But Laura never spoke about her family. Never. She would talk about her job, her stopovers in Los Angeles and Sydney—cities I’d always dreamed of visiting. But she never mentioned her family. Once, last May, I asked her without thinking if she’d had any ideas for a Mother’s Day present. She gave me a frosty look—so different from her usual, kind self—and she went on her way without a word. That was when I realized something was up.”

Fernanda falls silent. She has said her piece. The two police officers thank her for her help. As they are heading back to the Bunker, Jean notes that neither witness so far this morning had stretched to offering them a coffee. They peel off toward the edge of parc de la Villette. Once they’re at Café de la Musique they can sit soft, chill out, and talk away from any wagging ears, of which there are plenty at the commissariat. Leather sofas, two Sidamo mochas—two dollars sixty cents each—on the table in front of them. Okay, who’ll start? Jean steps up.

“What went on up there with Taroudant? On first impressions he’s a prime suspect. In the end we barely interrogated him. I don’t know . . . It was like a dream . . . I had these childhood flashbacks: Saint-Pol-de-Léon; Horace McCoy; my father. Stuff I hadn’t thought about for years.”

His voice is thin and reedy, his eyes glazed over. Rachel senses he is about to drift off again. She brushes his hand and tries to catch his eye.

“Grace,” she says in a murmur.

“Sorry?”

“Up there in his apartment we shared a moment of grace. Something rare and fragile. A vibration. A thread so fine it’s practically invisible, the smallest breath enough to disturb it. The thread that will guide our investigation.”