The Blue Hour (14 page)

“I will need to take all this evidence with me, along with your passport.”

“Are you charging me with a crime?”

“Not yet. But there is clear evidence here that—”

“What?” I said, now emboldened and angry. “The way I see it, my husband realized that I had found out about his lie and that I was planning to leave him, and went berserk. Tearing up his drawings, slamming his head against the wall. We have to find him.
Now
.”

My delivery of this statement was so vehement that it rendered Moufad and Picard wide-eyed. Moufad finally replied, “I am still taking the journals, the documents, the notes, and your passport as—”

“You will do no such thing,” I said, “unless you want to formally charge me with my husband's disappearance . . . if, that is, he disappeared.”

“
Madame
, you do not know the law here.”

“I know that the United States has an embassy in Rabat and a consulate in Casablanca. If you try to seize my passport or any of my possessions—and that includes my husband's effects—I will make a phone call. You will then have to deal with the consequences.”

Just to prove that I meant business, I started to reach for my journal. The uniformed officer instinctively reached out and grabbed me roughly by the arm. I broke away and screamed at him:

“
Comment osez-vous? Je connais mes droits!
”

The officer backed off immediately.

“There is no need for drama,
madame
,” Moufad said.

“Yes there is. My husband is in distress, perhaps terribly injured. And probably wandering around Essaouira, bleeding badly and disoriented. We are wasting precious time here. I suggest that we all rush to Chez Fouad to see if he might be there now, or if Fouad has taken him to a doctor.”

Silence. I could see that the inspector was calculating his next move.

“Okay,” he said. “We will go to Chez Fouad. But everything remains here.”

“No way,” I said. “Because we could return from Fouad's and find that, in my absence, your men cleared the place out.”

“You have my word,
madame
.”

“With respect . . . that's not enough,
monsieur
.”

Another silence. Then an idea dropped into my head.

“I will, however, allow you to photograph everything—just as it is now. Before we leave. But the documents, the notebooks, remain with me.”

The inspector bit on his lower lip, not completely disliking this idea . . . but not at all pleased with the way I was setting the agenda.

“I will agree to that—on two conditions. The room is sealed after we photograph it. I am certain M. Picard can find you another room for the night. And I will assign one of my men to watch guard over you.”

“That is not at all necessary.”

“Yes,
madame
, it is. Though you have not been charged with any crime so far, there is the fact that some sort of potentially criminal activity took place in this room. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps your husband has indeed attempted to harm himself, as he is burdened by guilt and the realization that he has lost you; that you are leaving him. Which, no doubt, must be something very hard to bear. But who's to say he might not come back and try to harm you? We must rest assured that you are safe here tonight. Would you not agree?”

I felt myself about to flinch again.

“I am certain that Paul will not do me harm.”

“But if he's left blood on the walls from self-inflicted wounds, and has ripped up his precious artwork . . .”

I didn't have a retort to that, so I said nothing. The inspector asked M. Picard if there was any access from the roof or a back door into the hotel. Picard informed him that only a cat could find a way from the roof into one of the rooms, and that the rear entrance was always padlocked from the inside.

“There is no way for a guest to leave the hotel except by the front door,” Picard noted.

“Then I will, with your permission, have one of my men stationed in front of the hotel all night to ensure that no harm comes to
madame
—”

“If I choose to go for a walk tonight?” I asked.

“The officer will accompany you. By the way,
madame
, I will be approaching a judge tomorrow morning to obtain a warrant to seize the evidence we've photographed and also to force you to turn your passport over to us until the investigation into your husband's disappearance has been concluded.”

“Then I will be contacting my embassy first thing tomorrow morning as well.”

“That is your prerogative,
madame
. Meanwhile”—he turned to M. Picard—“with your permission I will have several of my men search your hotel to see if
madame
's husband might still be here, hidden away somewhere.”

Picard nodded his assent. But then I said, “Could it be that my husband went out when someone wasn't standing watch on the front door?”

Now all eyes were on Ahmed. He looked uneasy with all the attention.

“I was at the desk all afternoon—and never saw M. Paul leave,” he said.

“So he must still be here,” the inspector noted.

“But surely if M. Ahmed had to pick up the phone, or deal with a guest, or answer a call to nature, my husband could have slipped by undetected.”

Again all eyes were on Ahmed. He just shrugged. And said, “Of course the nature of my job means that I am not at the front desk one hundred percent of the time.”

“So he could easily have gone out,” I said.

“Someone would have seen him,” Picard interjected. “We have our own man out front most of the time. Karim. He is our informal security person during the day—and is always outside, sweeping, tending to the plants, ensuring no one loiters near the entrance. We have another man there at night—as
madame
knows, since he helped rescue her on her first night when she made the dangerous mistake of wandering off on her own.”

Trumped again. I could see the inspector, in the wake of hearing this little tale, deciding I was trouble.

Just to twist the knife deeper, Picard added, “I spoke to Karim in the hours after we heard the commotion in your room. He was out front all afternoon and never saw your husband go out.”

“But I did not see Karim when I left for my walk,” I said.

Picard narrowed me in his sights.

“Yes, he saw you leave—and he told me you had murder in your eyes.”

“That's not true,” I said . . . though, of course, I knew that, after leaving all that self-implicating evidence on the bed, I did storm off, looking frenzied. But that line about Karim seeing me . . .

“Does it matter if he thought I looked angry?” I said. “The fact that he saw me leave the hotel before my husband got back—”

“He never saw your husband come back,” Picard retorted. “Nor did he see him leave. Neither did Ahmed. Isn't that right, Ahmed?”

Ahmed nodded his head several times. Who wants to bite the hand that pays him? Especially when the hand belongs to such a cold calculating operator as Picard, who wants to keep the police on his side and will happily see me framed for all this if it wins him points with the cops. In a place like this, having the police in your corner is a serious necessity.

“I will say this once more. My husband left the hotel around twelve ten. I left around two o'clock. I came back an hour later. I went and took a walk on the beach. In my absence something happened in our room which left blood on the wall and my husband . . .”

I felt myself tear up, but I held down the sob and managed to say, “. . . he's somewhere out there, injured, in desperate need of help. So can we please get out of here and over to Chez Fouad?”

The inspector studied his fingernails for several moments, then said, “We will leave for Chez Fouad when we have photographed everything in the room and when we have searched the hotel and are satisfied that your husband's body hasn't been secreted here. And no, you may not go to Fouad's alone. I may not as yet be able to take your passport away from you. But I can have you escorted and followed everywhere in Essaouira. Which is exactly what I am planning to do.”

IT TOOK THEM
more than two hours to search the hotel. Every room was opened—and several guests disturbed—as the police, all led by Inspector Moufad, looked under every bed and in every bathtub and insisted on opening every wardrobe. All storage closets were inspected on each of the four floors. The meat locker and the big freezer in the kitchen. The extralarge garbage bins in the rear alley. The staff rooms in the basement.

On and on the inspection went, despite my entreaties to let me go, accompanied by an officer, to Fouad's. The inspector was informing me that, from this juncture on, we'd be playing by his rules. He insisted on sending for the “official police photographer” to take detailed pictures of the two telltale notes, the two journals, the shredded drawings, the broken chest of drawers, the crimson splatter on the stonework. At one juncture the young cleaner, Mira, came in with a tray of mint tea for the policemen, but Ahmed, accompanying her, insisted on pouring it himself. I could tell immediately that Mira found the sight of the destroyed room more than a little unnerving. She looked at me with silent trepidation, as if she wanted to tell me something but clearly couldn't with all the officialdom around. When I caught her eye and motioned that we should talk in the corridor, she shook her head and hurried off. I checked my watch. It was now 8:10 p.m. The inspector came back into the room.

I said, “We could have spent the last two hours searching for my husband. Instead we—”

“Are you telling me how to run this investigation,
madame
?”

“I just want to find Paul. I'm scared,
monsieur
. Scared for him.”

“You will be pleased to hear that I had two of my men scouring the beach. They had our four-by-four, so they were able to drive around ten kilometers down its sands. No sign of your husband . . . unless, of course, he decided to go into the water. Or was pushed.”

Again the inspector was studying me, trying to fathom how I was dealing with that unveiled accusation, or the thought that perhaps Paul threw himself into the Atlantic with his head hemorrhaging blood. Again I felt the anguish welling up. But I managed to push it away as I met his accusing stare straight on and said:

“
Vous êtes un homme très sympathique. Un mec très class
.”

I could see him flinch. Just as I could also see him quickly recover and shoot back, “
Vous allez regretter cette parole
.”

A moment later the same uniformed officer who'd arrived with the inspector showed up in the room to inform him that the search of the hotel was completed and nothing had been found.

“Can we now go to Fouad's?” I demanded.

“We first need to make an inventory of all the goods you are taking with you.”

This process took another half hour. Every object I was moving into the new room that Picard found for me down the corridor had to be first registered in a police log. After documenting the journals, the papers and notes, the laptops, our respective clothes and toiletries, I was allowed to put the crucial items in a backpack. Picard called back Mira and told her that she should pack up all our clothes and move them with our suitcases to Room 212, and also deal with anything left in the bathroom or elsewhere. Again I sensed she wanted to make contact with me. Again the presence of others thwarted her.

“All right,
madame
, we will now go to Chez Fouad,” the inspector announced.

I hoisted the backpack onto my shoulders.

“Surely you should leave that behind in your new room,” Picard said.

“And discover it all not here, but with the police when I return?”

“I appreciate your confidence,
madame
,” the inspector said.

“
Je vous en prie,
” I replied.

As we were leaving, Picard asked to speak to me for a moment.

“I will have to charge you for the new room in which I am putting you until the police allow me to redecorate the one that you and your husband destroyed.”

“I had nothing to do with—”

“I must inform you that, in addition to the five hundred dirhams per night for the new room, I estimate that, to replace the chest of drawers, repaint and repair everything in your old suite . . . it will be around eight thousand dirhams.”

That was almost one thousand dollars. Absurd. Especially as just three of the drawers were smashed, and the hand-painted chest itself remained undamaged. There were only three long blotches of blood on the wall, most of which would come off with soap and hot water. But I was too stressed to argue with this oily little man. So I told him, “I will pay for the extra room tonight. We have paid the entire month for the suite in advance. So your lawyer can speak to my lawyer about the cost of the alleged damages.”