The Good Thief's Guide to Paris (13 page)

Paige didn’t take long to put her clothes on. Her movements were rushed and awkward, mainly because she’d worked herself into such a rage. I suppose I should tell you that I turned my back while she dressed but the truth is I looked. At the time, I told myself I couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t grab something and smack me over the back of my head if I was dumb enough to turn away. But if I’m honest, I think it also had something to do with wanting to make her feel as uncomfortable as possible. If that was my intent, I’m not sure it worked. Despite her fury, she had the presence of mind to put on her skirt beneath the sheet and to slip her blouse over her head before she let the sheet drop to the floor.

Paige gave me a spiteful look, loaded with bile. “You really expect me to leave? It’s the middle of the damn night.”

“You want me to call you a taxi?”

She held my eyes, as if waiting for me to relent. I wasn’t in the mood. Yes, it was a risk letting her go – she might raise the alarm or even return with some form of weapon once she’d had the opportunity to think about it. And even though I was angry with her, I knew it wasn’t entirely safe to send her out into the banlieue on her own. But then again, what else could I do? I couldn’t talk to Bruno freely if she was in the room with us – there’d be too many interruptions. I had nothing to tie her up with and even if I locked her in the bathroom, there was nothing to say she wouldn’t scream the place down. And considering I’d seen one woman dead from asphyxiation already, I wasn’t all that eager to experiment with a gag.

And hell, the dead woman was really the point here. If she’d been found by now, it would have been in my apartment, and my name would be the only one the police would be looking for in connection with her death.

Paige was still watching me, as if sensing I was thinking the situation through. I didn’t want to give her the impression she had any angles left to work. Hurriedly, I pulled a fifty euro note from my trouser pocket, then seized her by the shoulders, turned her in the direction of the front door and forced her all the way through. Once she was outside in the darkened hallway, I pressed the money into her hand.

“I’m shutting this door,” I said. “And you’d better go. I’m not kidding about the dead woman, Paige. Really. Bruno’s put my head in a noose and I intend to find out why. Take a cab back to the bookshop. And don’t tell anyone I’m here. I’m not above killing people myself – not if it’ll save my own neck.”

I couldn’t tell if she bought my last line or not and I had no way to make sure. All I could do was give her a final shove in the direction of the stairwell and shut the door behind her. I crossed the room and grabbed the edge of the futon, then dragged it all the way over until it was flush against the door. I stood still for a moment and sucked in some deep breaths, willing myself to focus. Bruno was waiting, silent in the next room, and I was ready for some answers.

SIXTEEN

As I entered the bedroom, I tossed the sheet Paige had discarded over Bruno’s body. We’d need to talk for a while and I didn’t relish the idea of doing that while he was virtually naked. Bruno didn’t seem to care either way. Hats off to the guy – even handcuffed to his bed in a state of undress with a seriously ticked-off burglar watching over him, he still had the nerve to grin at me like he was holding all the aces. I guess that had a lot to do with Paige. He knew I’d been attracted to her and he must have felt pretty smug.

That changed when I saw the keys for the handcuffs on the floor beside the bed. There were two identical keys, both small, threaded onto a flimsy keyring. I picked them up and twirled them before my eyes, acting as if they intrigued me greatly. Then I opened my jacket and dropped the keys into my inside pocket. Bruno cocked his head and gave me a sceptical look.

“What?” I asked. “You think that’s for show? I’ll leave you like this, believe me.”

He gave me one of his shrugs.

“It doesn’t bother you?”

He added a pout.

“Yeah, you’re a regular Houdini.”

I turned and looked towards the corner of the room, where a straight-backed chair was positioned. I lifted the chair and tipped the bundle of clothes that were resting on it onto the floor. I carried the chair over to the side of the bed, sat down and put my feet on the edge of the mattress beside Bruno’s shoulders.

“So. Shall we talk?”

He wet his lips. “I want to sleep with the girl you like.”

“She’s gone.”

“Maybe she will come back.”

“With the police, you mean? With reinforcements?” I shook my head. “She’s not the type.”

Suddenly, Bruno bounced up from the mattress, pivoting at his hips and lashing out at me with his legs, trying to connect with the side of my head. Instinctively, I rocked back on the chair so that his feet brushed off my chin. My skull and shoulders smacked into the bedroom wall. I put my hand to the floor, fighting for my balance, then looked up to see Bruno’s body twisted on the bed, his hairy legs hanging over the side of the mattress. Before he could move again, I leapt into the air and dropped my elbow onto his back, forcing all of my weight down onto his contorted wrists. He yelled, sounding panicked.

“Did they break? I’ll break them, you shit.”

He tried to swing his body back around but I blocked him with my hip, then used both my hands to push down hard on his shoulder blades. I watched his right wrist bend unnaturally around the headboard railing it was attached to. Bruno screamed, though I still didn’t think I’d broken anything. The skin near the handcuff on his wrist was pinched and very pale. I backed off, then snatched his ankles and threw his legs onto the bed. I set the chair on its feet again and sat myself down. I waited for him to compose himself.

“All I want is to talk,” I told him. “Just answer my questions and that’s it.”

Bruno was staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, sucking in lungfuls of air. He rested his head in the crook of his armpit while his bare chest rose and fell in a fitful way. I wasn’t sure how much his wrists hurt. If it was me, I knew the idea of the bones breaking would be playing over and over in my mind. He looked young now, much younger than me. I began to think he really was scared, and although that was useful it was also unsettling. I wasn’t the kind of person to do that to people. At least, I didn’t think I was.

“Breathe easy,” I told him. “Stay calm. I’m not going to hurt you if you co-operate.”

He rocked his head to the side and looked at me from over the curve of his bicep. I made my face as open as I possibly could. In any other circumstances, what I’d just said would be plain ridiculous. Bruno was far more powerfully built than me, and in a straight fight there would have been only one winner.

“I’m serious. Believe me?”

Bruno’s eyes became plaintive. His cheeks flushed and I noticed a sweaty sheen on his skin. After a pause, he nodded.

“Good,” I said. “So we just need to talk. And you’re willing to do that, right?”

“Talk about Paige?” he asked, voice catching.

“What?”

He swallowed, the sinews in his neck standing out like cords. “That is why you are here, yes?”

“God no. I had no idea about that. She told me she didn’t know who you were.”

He smiled thinly, as though it didn’t surprise him to hear it.

“How long have you two . . .”

“A month.”

“Huh.” I raised my eyebrows. “So at the end of the reading, you were what, pulling my chain?”

He shrugged, and the handcuffs rattled against the metal struts on the headboard. “I could see you liked her.”

“I guess she’s attractive.”

“You guess.” He smirked. “Me also. She knows it, yes? You can see it in her.”

“She’s confident, sure.”

“She is good, you know?”

He winked and I shook my head as if I couldn’t care less. I’d let us get way off track already. Perhaps it was because it was so late at night. There was a kind of background tiredness in my head, like a clinging mist. It was gumming up my thinking, making me sluggish. I needed to get down to it.

“I want to talk about Catherine Ames. Did you kill her, Bruno?”

Bruno’s reaction was startling, as if someone had hit the pause button in his brain. His face went slack and his pupils became dark circles. I clicked my fingers until he refocused and stared at me, his forehead crinkled, eyes full of suspicion.

“She is dead?”

“Very.”

He blinked, then swallowed. This time I must have convinced him. His jaw dropped and he shook his head from side to side, as though disorientated.

“How?”

“She was tied to a chair and suffocated.”

Bruno began to shake his head more vigorously, as if trying to erase the image I’d put in his mind. Without a word, he lifted his arms and began to wriggle backwards on the bed, arranging himself in a more upright position. It still didn’t look comfortable but it was a little more dignified. I wasn’t sure how to read him. Either he really hadn’t known or he’d been rehearsing what his reaction should be. I found myself wishing, not for the first time, that I was more like the characters in my novels – the kind that always know when a suspect is lying.

“When did she die?” he asked.

“Yesterday. The afternoon, I think. Where were you then?”

He stared at me, looking puzzled still. “At work.”

“At the bank?”

He whistled. “How do you know this?”

“Never mind. Were you there all day?”

“Yes.”

“What about a lunch hour?”

“There is a park nearby. I meet Paige.”

“Convenient.”

“It is true.” He nodded, as if that proved everything.

“I didn’t see you.”

“In the park?”

“The bank. I was there around four-thirty. You weren’t at any of the service desks.”

“Because it is not where I work.”

I paused for a moment, then let it drop. It wasn’t something worth getting caught up in. These were questions the police might ask Bruno if they ever connected him to the murder. If they weren’t convinced by what he told them, they’d have the means to investigate his story. For my sake, I needed to be sure they couldn’t connect Bruno to me.

“Tell me about Catherine’s apartment in the Marais,” I said. “The one you had us break into.”

His face tangled. “The apartment?”

“What, you’re going to tell me you’ve forgotten about it?”

He blinked again, waiting for me to continue.

“You told me it was your place,” I prompted.

“I lied.”

“No kidding. But how did you find out about it? You’d been there before, correct?”

Bruno sucked on his lips, as if weighing his response. “Yes.”

“I thought as much. That’s how the concierge recognised you, and how you knew about the alarm code and where the coffee was kept. It’s also how you knew the apartment was empty.”

He nodded, warily.

“But how did you know Catherine?”

Bruno glanced down at his washboard stomach, as if it contained the answer.

“She was a girlfriend?”

He screwed up his face.

“A mistress then?”

“Hey,” he said, as though offended.

“Well, what? You tell me, Bruno. I’m the one in the dark here.”

“I sleep with her. Twice only.”

“But she was what, fifty?”

“I do not know. Why does it matter?”

“Doesn’t matter to me. Could maybe matter to Paige, I suppose.”

He gave me an incredulous look, and I realised how misguided my threat was. They weren’t in the middle of a romance, then.

“Go back a stage,” I said. “You met at the bank, right?”

He screwed up his face, as though now he really was suspicious that I knew so much.

“I found out that Catherine had an account there,” I explained, with a wave of my hand.

“How?”

I shook my head. I wasn’t here to answer his questions and I wasn’t eager to tell him more than he already knew. I didn’t owe him anything, least of all a full explanation. And besides, it could be dangerous to join all the dots for him. Who was to say he wouldn’t invent a few steps and give the police everything they needed to hang the killing on me? They already had the body in my apartment, once they got round to finding it.

“I want to know about the painting.”

He held my eye, unwilling to commit just yet.

“Come on Bruno. I’m talking about the painting you stole, after I left you that night.”

He still didn’t say anything. I was surprised. He must have known by now that I’d put it together.

“Listen, you took it away in your backpack, right? Then you sold it to the gallery across from the bank.”

“You have been following me?” he asked, squinting.

“No, as it happens. But the fact is I need to know about the painting, Bruno. I need to know why you stole it.”

He blew air through his lips, as if he wasn’t sure where to start. Before speaking again, he flicked his cuffed hands above his head, almost like he was wafting the issue away.

“For money,” he said, gesturing with his head at the room we were in, as if that was answer enough.

“But you have a bank job. It must pay okay.”

“Okay, yes. But I need a lot of money.”

“You have debts?”

“Many.”

“Who to?”

He chewed his lip for a moment.

“Just tell me, Bruno.”

“There is a man who comes here, to Clichy. He will give you money, mais, it is expensive, yes?”

“You’re saying he’s a loan-shark?”

He nodded.

“Okay,” I said, slowly. “And you stole the painting for money, I get that. But what made you think it was worth anything? There were a lot of paintings in that apartment. Why take that one in particular?”

He smiled weakly, hitched his broad shoulders. “She told me, it is worth a lot of money. That is why it was on the wall, yes? The other paintings, she did them, but this one, it was different.”

“In what way?”

“I do not know. But it was what she said.”

“How much did you get for it?”

He smiled glumly. “Two thousand euros only.”

“You expected more?”

He shrugged.

“How much more?”

“A lot, maybe. She had money, yes? It is why I knew her. At the bank, we have a vault. It is where I work.”

“A vault. And Catherine kept some things inside it?”

“Of course.”

“Like?”

“I do not know.”

“Oh come on. You’re telling me you didn’t look?”

“I cannot,” he said, insistent now. “Inside the vault, there are boxes, all locked. The customer, they sign a paper form and I let them into the vault. Then I take their box to a private room. They use a card to get inside.”

“You mean like a swipe card?” I asked, gesturing with my hand as though I was passing a credit card through an electronic reader. “The kind with a magnetic strip?”

“Yes. I cannot see what is in the box.”

“What did you think might be there?”

He stuck out his bottom lip. “I do not know. Money, maybe. It did not matter. I could not take anything.”

“But the painting was different?”

“I think so.”

“Because you had me.”

Bruno held my eye, then nodded. “I did not have a key. Paige, she talked about your book and I thought maybe you could help me.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”

He peered at me through narrowed eyes. “Would you have done it?”

“Perhaps. I don’t know. I shouldn’t have helped you as it was.”

“But you did.”

I let that one go. It didn’t feel like a time to dwell on past mistakes.

“Tell me, how did you know the apartment would be empty?”

His face brightened, as though I’d asked him an easy question at last. “Catherine worked near Orléans, always from Monday until Thursday. On Fridays, she come to Paris for the weekend.”

“What is it she did?”

“I do not know. She did not say.”

I paused and looked about the room. The alarm clock on the floor near my feet read almost three in the morning. I had the feeling there was more I could find out but I wasn’t sure how. The way I saw it, Bruno had no idea about the plans I’d found hidden inside the painting. When Catherine had told him the painting was valuable, he’d assumed it was because of the work itself, not what the painting had contained. And that’s why he’d sold it to the gallery on Rue Quincampoix.

For a moment, I considered telling him about the plans to see if he could shed any light on them, but I didn’t think it was likely. If Catherine hadn’t told him what her profession happened to be, she’d hardly have told him something like that. And besides, keeping him in the dark might be more useful to me than telling him everything just now.

“Let me go?” Bruno asked, interrupting my thoughts and rattling the handcuffs.

I peered at him. “That depends. Where’s the money?”

“Money?” He blinked.

“The two thousand euros you got for the painting. Where is it?”

Bruno began to look pale. “I need it.”

“I get that, Bruno. In fact, I get the impression you need it pretty bad. The thing is, I could do with your help at some point in the next few days and I figure you might need some motivation. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to hold onto your money, and if you come through for me, I’ll give it back to you.”