The Third Woman. Mark Burnell
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And she would run. As she had in the past. That was the easy part. Nobody ran as effortlessly as Petra. But she couldn’t allow fear to be the fuel. Before that, however, there were questions.
She rose into the ethnic melting-pot of Belleville. The pavement along the eastern flank of the broad boulevard de Belleville was busy. Stephanie weaved through Afghans, Turks, Iranians, Georgians, Chinese. A group of five tall Sudanese were arguing on the corner of rue Ramponeau. A Vietnamese woman barged past her dragging a bulging laundry bag. Traffic was stationary in both directions, frustrated drivers leaning on their horns.
Stephanie switched on her mobile. No messages and no missed calls since she’d turned it off twenty minutes after clearing Passage du Caire. She return-dialled Jacob Furst’s number. No answer. She switched the phone off again and walked up rue Lémon to rue Dénoyez. The five-storey building was on the other side of the road. At street level, the Boucherie Shalom was closed. The restaurant next to it was open but Stephanie couldn’t see any diners through the window.
The Fursts’ apartment was on the third floor. No lights on, the curtains open. There were weeds sprouting from the plaster close to a fracture in the drainpipe. There was no building to the right. It had been demolished, the waste ground screened from the street by a barricade of blue and green corrugated iron.
She ventured left, away from the building, heading up the cobbled street past graffiti and peeling bill posters, past the entrance to the seedy Hotel Dénoyez – rooms by the hour – until she came to rue Belleville. Then she made a circle and approached rue Dénoyez from the other end at rue Ramponeau.
The Furst family had a Parisian lineage stretching back two centuries. In that time, there had been two constants: a family business centred on the garment industry and active participation within the Jewish community. Which included living among that community. And here was the proof. On rue Ramponeau, Stephanie stood with her back to La Maison du Taleth, a shop selling Jewish religious artefacts. Restaurants and sandwich shops all displayed with prominence the Star of David.
She returned to boulevard de Belleville. From the France Télécom phonebooth by the Métro exit she rang the police. An incident to report, some kind of break-in, she told them. She’d heard noises – screams for help, breaking glass, a loud bang – and now nothing. Please hurry – they’re an old couple. Vulnerable …
When they’d asked for her name, she put down the phone.
She watched from the bright blue entrance to Hotel Dénoyez. When the patrol car pulled up a pair of officers emerged and she noticed two things. First, they looked casual; from the way they moved she guessed they were expecting an exaggerated domestic disturbance. Or a hoax. The second thing was the dark blue BMW 5-series halfway between her and the patrol car.
It had been there as long as she’d been loitering by the hotel entrance. She’d assumed there was no one in it. But when the patrol car pulled up, the BMW’s engine coughed, ejecting a squirt of oily smoke from the exhaust. She peered more carefully through the back window and now saw that there were two people inside. The car didn’t move until the police officers had entered the building. Then it pulled away from the kerb, tyres squeaking on the cobbles, turning right at rue Ramponeau.
She continued to wait. A third-floor light came on. Stephanie pictured Miriam Furst in the kitchen at the rear of the flat. Making coffee for the policemen, taking mugs from the wooden rack above the sink. That was how she remembered it. Beside the rack, a cheap watercolour of place des Vosges hung next to a cork noticeboard with family photographs pinned to it: three children, all girls, and nine grandchildren, none of whom had been inclined to steer the Furst textile business into its third century.
Fifteen minutes after the arrival of the first police car, a second arrived. Followed within forty-five seconds by an ambulance, then a third police car and, finally, a second ambulance. Three policemen began to cordon off the street.
Now it was no longer just Stephanie’s fingers that were going numb.
We pull into Tuileries, in the direction of La Défense. I’ll probably change at Franklin D. Roosevelt and head for Mairie de Montreuil, then change again after a dozen stations or so. It’s five-to-eleven and I’ve been riding the Métro for more than two hours. There’s no better way to make yourself invisible for a short while than to ride public transport in a major city late at night. Later, they’ll see me on CCTV recordings, drifting back and forth. But by then I’ll be somewhere else. And someone else.
Above ground, in the bars and restaurants, in private homes, there is only one topic of discussion tonight. The bomb blast in Sentier. Many dead, many wounded, many theories. There’ll be grief and outrage on the news, and plenty of inaccurate in-depth analysis from the experts.
I know that Jacob and Miriam Furst are dead. Nobody will read about them tomorrow. They will have died largely as they lived; unnoticed. I also know that I should be dead too.
The men who chased me through the smoking wreckage in Passage du Caire were there to make sure. They were there so quickly. And they weren’t looking for anyone else; they recognized me.
I try to fix a version of events in my head. Furst is held against his will until he’s made the call to establish that I’m in place. He’s surprised that I’m there. Did he think I wouldn’t come? He tells me he’ll be with me in fifteen minutes, then two. Why the difference? To arouse my suspicion? To warn me?
How did he get the number? And why wasn’t I more vigilant? Perhaps, mentally, I was already halfway to Mauritius.
After our conversation is over, the explosion occurs within a minute. But the more I consider it, the more perplexing it becomes. They – whoever ‘they’ are – needed to be sure that I’d be in Paris today. That I’d be in La Béatrice at one o’clock. How could they be confident that I’d make the trip from Brussels? And if I’m to assume that they knew I was in Brussels, which as a matter of security I must, shouldn’t I also assume that they know I’m Marianne Bernard? And if they know that, where does the line of enquiry stop? Whether they knew about Marianne Bernard or not, it’s obvious who they really wanted. Petra Reuter. She’s the one with the reputation.
So why the elaborate deceit? Nobody who knew anything about her would risk that. They’d take her down the moment they found her. At home, for instance, in a run-down apartment in Brussels. They’d catch her with her guard down. Simpler, safer, better.
There can be only one answer: they needed me to be at La Béatrice.
The Marais, quarter-past-five in the morning, the streetlamps reflected in puddles not quite frozen. Rue des Rosiers was almost empty; one or two on the way home, one or two on the way to work, hands in pockets, chins tucked into scarves.
It had been after midnight when she abandoned the Métro. Since then, she’d stopped only once, when the rain had returned just before three. She’d found an all-night café not far from where she was now; candlelight and neon over concrete walls, leather booths in dark corners, Ute Lemper playing softly over the sound system.
Stephanie stretched a cup of black coffee over an hour before anyone approached her. A tall, angular woman with deathly pale skin and dark red shoulder-length hair, wearing a purple silk shirt beneath a black leather overcoat. She smiled through a slash of magenta lipstick and sat down opposite Stephanie.
‘Hello. I’m Véronique.’
Véronique from Lyon. She’d been awkwardly beautiful once – perhaps not too long ago – but thinness had aged her. And so had unhappiness. Stephanie warmed to her because she understood the chilly solitude of being alone in a city of millions.
They talked for a while before Véronique reached for Stephanie’s hand. ‘I live close. Do you want to come? We could have a drink?’
Petra