Read The Good Thief's Guide to Paris Online

Authors: Chris Ewan

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Crime

The Good Thief's Guide to Paris (6 page)

BOOK: The Good Thief's Guide to Paris
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SEVEN

The day concierge was a woman. She was hard-faced, with sallow cheeks and a hairdo that looked artificial – all blonde highlights and fixing spray. She was also attentive. So far I’d watched three people enter the apartment building and she’d made each of them sign the guest register. That wasn’t necessarily a problem; I could always jot down a false name. But suppose it wasn’t Bruno’s apartment? If she asked me to write the name of the person I was visiting and I happened to provide one she didn’t recognise, I’d be in trouble.

Some might say I already was. A half-hour earlier, I’d ducked along the service alley to the side of the apartment building and made my way to the rear. There was a fire exit there, just as I’d hoped, but it was wired into a localised alarm system and a closed-circuit camera was fixed above the double doors. The handles of the doors had been secured to one another with a metal chain and a combination padlock, something I guessed any fire inspector wouldn’t be too thrilled about. From the security measures that had been put in place, it wasn’t hard to deduce that other people had broken in through the fire exit in the past and, although I could pick the padlock open without too much trouble and there were ways to dupe the camera and silence the alarm, I couldn’t pretend it was tempting. Even supposing I got in without a hitch, I had no idea what lay behind the doors. Sure, it was likely to be a flight of stairs, but there could just as easily be a store room with a caretaker inside or a laundry facility being used by any number of residents. There could even be a second security camera, pointed straight at me.

A ground-floor window was positioned some distance away from the fire exit but it was protected by a set of iron bars. And since I didn’t happen to have a blowtorch with me or a guaranteed hour without interruptions, I wasn’t going to be gaining entry that way either. The other windows were too high for me to reach without a ladder or a serious growth spurt and I already knew the delivery door at the side of the building opened onto the concierge’s desk. And . . . well, that was it. Those were my options. And since none of them were viable, I was going to have to look elsewhere.

Like next door for instance. Not at the greengrocers but at the two-star hotel. From the look of the tatty curtains hanging in the rear windows and the flaking render on the back wall, it was in no danger of improving upon its accommodation rating in the near future and I guessed the security would be relatively lax. It certainly appeared as if I could get in through the back readily enough. There was a rear service entrance that appeared to be permanently unguarded and I didn’t doubt that it would connect with a guest staircase before very long. But then again, it was mid-morning on a Wednesday and there was no compelling reason for me to risk getting caught. And besides, I’d already had a much better idea.

The gentleman I found behind the hotel reception desk might well have felt more at home swinging from the rafters in Notre Dame Cathedral. He didn’t have a hunched back, but he did have a quite enormous belly and if he’d bothered to shave at all that morning, then his razor was in dire need of being changed. He hunkered down over my passport as he copied the personal details into his ledger, the filmy drool on his lips threatening to drip onto his handiwork.

I say
my
passport but actually that’s a little misleading. The passport in question belonged to an expat lawyer called David James Birk and the truth was I’d relieved him of it during a visit to his studio apartment some months beforehand. At the time, Mr Birk had been unavailable, something I was fortunate enough to know because a mutual friend had invited us both to the same production of
Madame Bovary
at the Palais Garnier Opéra. I’d declined, feeling more in the mood for a spot of thieving, and I’d come away from the night with a respectable bundle of cash and a nifty new wrist-watch, not to mention the passport. Normally, it wasn’t the kind of item I stole, but when I’d flicked by chance to the back page I’d been surprised to discover how alike we looked. According to his date of birth, David Birk was just one year older than me and his hair was perhaps a shade darker and certainly cut in a more business-like fashion, but I still felt confident that anyone casting just a quick glance at the photograph was unlikely to challenge me. As it happened, I’m not sure the hotel receptionist even looked at the picture. He was really just interested in Mr Birk’s passport number so he could claim back the relevant tourist tax.

My room cost a little more than I’d expected, and that surprised me because the interior of the hotel was far scummier than I’d been anticipating. The lino in the reception area was covered in a fine layer of grit and dust, and although the lighting was poor, it was difficult to ignore the grime that adhered to almost every surface. Even the tourist brochures on a nearby stand looked out of date, the ink on them faded as though they’d been stolen from an outdoor display at some point in the late eighties.

There may have been an elevator, but I wasn’t directed to it when Quasimodo handed me my room key and returned my passport, so I hefted the empty suitcase I’d brought along with me and began climbing the stairs. The threadbare carpet was gummy underfoot and the banister was loose and shaky. I went up two flights and paused to see if I could hear anybody moving about. I couldn’t. There was only the peculiar hum of a seemingly empty building and the stale, musty smell of its interior.

I climbed on. If anybody stopped me, I would simply act as if I was lost or senile or American, and allow myself to be directed back down to my room on the second floor. I might even stretch out on the bed for half an hour, if I dared, and try again later. But as it turned out, I had no need to concern myself with back-up plans because I reached the very top of the building without encountering another soul and, once there, I made my way through a flimsy, poorly hung door and out onto the mansard roof.

The view was quite something. I could see an entire world of haphazard rooftops and chimneys and television aerials and clotheslines and church spires and skyscrapers. It was one of those seemingly common spring days in Paris, when the light has a peculiar clarity to it that makes every edge and angle appear absolutely distinct. I lowered my suitcase and stood with my hands on my hips and took in the warm air, perfumed with the scent of freshly cooked pastries and ground coffee and mouldy cheeses, and enjoyed the weird super-focus my eyes seemed suddenly capable of. Way to the north, I could just glimpse the pimpled cream dome of the Sacré-Coeur and to the south-west I could see the glistening onyx windows of the Montparnasse Tower. Off to the west, the gold dome of the Invalides stood out in bright relief against the greys and whites and tans of the office buildings and apartment blocks, and nearer still the dark turrets of the Conciergerie were topped by a fluttering Tricolore. In that brief moment, I felt like I’d been gifted my own private city, and I must confess it was with more than a little reluctance that I finally turned from the scene to get back to work.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to do my cat-burglar routine and use a rope to climb up or lower myself a couple of storeys because the hotel and the apartment building were both exactly the same height. There was just a lip of tarred walling between them and I had only to step over it. Well, that and tackle the padlock on the door that led to the stairwell of the apartment building.

So from the back pocket of my jeans I removed a pair of very fine, disposable latex gloves and blew into the gloves to open them. That done, I slipped my left hand into the left glove and, being an orderly type, my right hand into the right glove. And winced. Hell, even the weight of the sheer plastic was enough to torment my gouty knuckles. Very carefully, I lifted the plastic away from the inflamed sores on my fingers, aiming to give them some respite. It didn’t help a great deal and part of me was tempted to ditch the gloves altogether and just give the padlock a good wipe clean when I was done. But the truth is I’ve never really believed in that approach. Why risk leaving a print at all?

No, I didn’t like it, and so I persisted with the gloves and reached for my spectacles case, quickly selecting a rake that happened to be slightly more compact than the one I’d armed Bruno with. I rested the padlock on my thigh to give myself something to lever off and inserted the rake. And a few moments later, the padlock was open and I was able to remove it from the rusting clasp and set it to one side, where it wouldn’t get lost. Then I opened the door and made my way into the same stairwell I’d negotiated just two days before.

And although it was quite literally a pain, I paused and removed my gloves. True, all I planned to do for the next few minutes was make my way to the apartment I was interested in, but if someone happened to pass me and spot my gloves it might look suspicious. For that matter, I don’t suppose the suitcase was such a great prop to have along with me either. It was very large, certainly big enough to be memorable, but I hoped that if anyone did happen to run into me carrying it, they’d just assume I was visiting a friend or hawking encyclopaedias. And besides, I needed something to transport the painting away in.

Mind you, it was awkward carrying the case in my left hand and I kept accidentally bumping it against the walls or catching it between my legs. I’d tried switching to my right hand, naturally, but the weight of the handle had been painful against the build-up of crystals in my fingers. It made me realise I’d have been better off investing in a record bag that I could have slung over my shoulder, but then again I wasn’t certain how big the painting was, and it would be just my luck to break in with a bag a fraction too small.

All of which thinking had distracted me from how many floors I’d walked down. I paused and tried to figure it out in my head. Then I leaned out over the banister and looked up towards the top of the stairwell but it didn’t help in the slightest. I was disorientated. There was a door to my side and I poked my head through and triggered the light sensor in the corridor. I could see the rubber plant and the tan banquette so I was one floor too high. I shut the door, hoisted the suitcase once more and made my way down to the third floor of the building.

Once I got there, I stood very still and listened for any noise from the corridor I was interested in. Then I dropped to my hands and my knees and studied the quarter-inch gap at the bottom of the door. I couldn’t see any light and I couldn’t hear anybody moving about, so I cracked the door open and peered through. The corridor was in darkness. I stepped out, instantly triggering the wall lights, and blinked away the sudden glare as I made my way to apartment 3A.

Facing up to the door of the apartment, I nudged the suitcase out of sight with my foot, then straightened my clothes, patted my hair flat and knocked. There was every chance somebody was inside. If it was Bruno, I’d make up some nonsense about dropping by to say hello. If it wasn’t Bruno – well, I’d deal with that if I had to. But it was beginning to look as if I was in the clear because my knock went unanswered.

I knocked again, just to be sure, and when there was still no answer, I slipped my gloves back on, wondering as I did so if there was some way to tear the plastic away from the two fingers that were bothering me without destroying the gloves altogether. I wasn’t concerned about the cost of replacing them, you understand, because I had a whole box of gloves at home. It was just that I only had one set of gloves with me and after all the trouble I’d gone to, I wasn’t keen to delay the job for the sake of one glove.

Then again, you could argue it was a bit too late to be worrying about gloves at all. The fact is I hadn’t worn them when I’d broken in with Bruno, so my fingerprints were already on the locking mechanism and scattered liberally around the apartment too. Would a few more hurt? Possibly not. But I guess in some ways I was keen to a draw a distinction between the two break-ins. The first one had been a mess, the kind of poorly executed plan that might have earned me a grade E at burglar school. This time, I was aiming for an A-plus and since I didn’t want to be marked down for inconsistency, I resolved to keep the gloves on.

Besides, there were adjustments I could make to minimise the pain as much as possible. When I removed my pick and got to work on the lock on the apartment door, for instance, I used only my index finger and my thumb. It took a little longer to do things that way, and it felt kind of weird, like writing left-handed, but I only set off the pain in my knuckles perhaps three times and it was worth it for that if nothing else. As soon as the lock had withdrawn, I pulled down on the door handle and opened the door.

You thought I’d forgotten about the alarm, right? Well, guess again, because I was ready and waiting for those friendly
pips
and they weren’t going to jeopardise my A-grade in the slightest. I fairly glided down the hallway to the storage cupboard and casually flipped down the panel on the fascia of the alarm control box before entering the code. The truth is I’d paid attention when Bruno had typed the combination in, you see. Call it a talent or a curse, but I notice these things. Some people have to read every word in a newspaper before they can get on with their day, others have to wash their hands a certain number of times before they can leave their home. Me, if I chance upon a code, I have to commit it to memory.

So I entered the code and I listened to the long, pleasing note of the device disarming itself. Once all was quiet, I returned to the corridor and retrieved my suitcase. Then I wiped down the locking mechanism as thoroughly as I could with a lint-free cloth, shut the door to the apartment behind me and got down to work.

Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t in the mood to waste time so I moved directly through the paint-spattered studio space in the main living area to the bedroom at the rear of the apartment. The first thing I noticed when I entered the bedroom was that the slatted window blind had been left partially open, casting bars of daylight across the neatly made double bed in the middle of the room. The second thing I noticed was the discoloured, rectangular patch of space on the whitewashed wall across from me. Above the patch of wall space was a picture lamp but there was no longer any picture for the lamp to cast its light upon. The other walls were bare. There was no painting whatsoever.

BOOK: The Good Thief's Guide to Paris
6.53Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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