House of War

The place was bustling and noisy, but there was a table free in a corner. Out of habit, Ben sat with his back to the wall so he could observe the entrance. A hurried waiter took his order for a large café noir and the compulsory fresh-baked croissant.

While he waited for his order to arrive, Ben sat quietly and absorbed the chatter from other customers. Predictably the subject of the day, here as everywhere in the city, was the riots. A pair of middle-aged men at the next table were getting quite animated over whether or not the president should declare martial law, order the rebuilding of the Bastille prison, stuff the whole lot of troublemakers behind bars and throw away the key.

When his breakfast arrived Ben gave up eavesdropping on their conversation, took a sip or two of the delicious coffee and tore off a corner of croissant to dunk into his cup. A Gauloise would have rounded things out nicely, but such pleasures as smoking inside a café were no longer to be had in the modern civilised world. He went back to thinking about the strange woman who had bumped into him. What was she so frightened of? Where had she been running from, or to? He had to admit it, he was intrigued. And sooner or later, he was going to have to do something about the phone in his pocket.

Curiosity getting the better of him, he took it out to examine more closely. If the screen happened to be locked, there might not be much he could do except just hand it in to the nearest gendarmerie as lost property. But when he flipped open the leather wallet he soon discovered that the phone wasn’t locked.

Which left him a number of potential ways to find out who the woman was and where she lived, allowing him to return the item to her personally. Ben was good at finding people. It was something he used to do for a living, after he’d quit the SAS to go his own way as what he’d euphemistically termed a ‘crisis response consultant’. A career that involved tracking down people who didn’t always want to be found, especially when they were holding innocent child hostages captive for ransom. Kidnappers didn’t make themselves easy to locate, as a rule. But Ben had located them anyway, and the consequences hadn’t been very pleasant for them.

By contrast, thanks to today’s technology, ordinary unsuspecting citizens were easy to track down. Too easy, in his opinion.

Feeling just a little self-conscious about intruding on her privacy, he scrolled around the phone’s menus. There were a few emails and assorted files, but his first port of call was the woman’s address book. She was conservative about what information she stored in her contacts list. There was someone called Michel, no surname, and another contact called ‘Maman/Papa’, obviously her parents, but no addresses for either, and no home address or home landline number for herself. But the mobile’s own number was there.

Ben took out his own phone to check it with. Damn these bloody things, but he was just as bound to them as the next guy. He’d got into the habit of carrying two of them: one a fancy smartphone registered to his business, the other a cheap, anonymous burner bought for cash, no names, no questions. Its anonymity pleased him and it came in handy in certain circumstances. But for this call he used his smartphone. He punched in the woman’s mobile number. Her phone rang in his other hand. You could tell a lot about a person from their choice of ringtone. Hers was a retro-style dring-dring, like the old dial phone that stood in the hallway of the farmhouse at Le Val. Ben liked that about her. He ended the call and the ringing stopped. So far, so good.

Next he used his smartphone to access the whitepages.fr people finder website, which scanned millions of data files to give a reverse lookup. When a prompt appeared he entered the woman’s mobile number and activated the search. Not all phone users were trackable this way, only a few hundred million worldwide. Which was a pretty large net, but still something of a gamble. If it didn’t pay off, he still had other options to try.

But that wouldn’t be necessary, because he scored a hit first time. In a few seconds he’d gained access to a whole range of information about the mystery woman: name, address, landline number, employer, and the contact details of two extant relatives in the Parisian suburb of Fontenay-sous-Bois a few kilometres to the east. If he’d been interested in offering her a job, he could run a background check to verify her credentials and see if she had any criminal record. If he was thinking of lending her money, he could view her credit rating. As things stood, he only needed the basics, which he now had.

Piece of cake.

Her name was Mme Romy Juneau. All adult women in France were now officially titled Madame regardless of marital status, since the traditional Mademoiselle had been banned for its alleged sexist overtones. But her parents’ shared surname matched hers, suggesting she was unmarried. Some traditions still prevailed. Ben guessed that the phone contact called Michel was probably a boyfriend. She worked at a place called Institut Culturel Segal, ICS for short. The Segal Cultural Institute, whatever that was, in an upmarket part of town on Avenue des Champs-Élysées.

More important to Ben at this moment was her home address, which was an apartment number in a street just a few minutes’ walk from where he was sitting right now, and in the direction she’d been heading when they’d bumped into one another.

It seemed safe to assume that she hadn’t been going to work that morning. Maybe she had the day off. Whatever the case, it was a reasonable assumption that she’d been making her way home. From where, he couldn’t say, and it didn’t really matter. If she was heading for her apartment, there was a strong likelihood that she’d have got there by now, considering the hurry she’d been in.

Ben scribbled her details in the little notebook he carried, then exited the whitepages website and punched in Romy Juneau’s landline number. As he listened to the dialling tone, he thought about what he’d say to her.

No reply. Perhaps she hadn’t got home yet, or was in the bathroom, or any number of possibilities. Ben aborted the call and looked at his watch. The morning was wearing on. He needed to be thinking about finishing breakfast and heading over to see Gerbier at his offices across town. Romy Juneau would have to wait until afterwards.

He was slurping down the last of the delicious coffee when his phone buzzed. He answered quickly, thinking that Romy must have just missed his call and was calling him back. His anticipation soon fell flat when he heard the unpleasantly raspy, reedy voice of Gaston Gerbier in his ear.

The estate agent was calling, very apologetically, to cancel their morning appointment because his hundred-year-old mother had started complaining of chest pains and been rushed off to hospital. It was probably nothing serious, Gerbier explained. The vicious old moo had been dying of the same heart attack for the last thirty-odd years and false alarms were a routine thing. Still, he felt obliged to be there, as the dutiful son, etc., etc. Ben said it was no problem; they could reschedule the appointment for next time he was in town. He wished the old moo a speedy recovery and hung up.

There went his morning’s duties. Ben couldn’t actually say he was sorry to be missing out on the joys of Gerbier’s company. And never mind about the apartment. It wasn’t going anywhere. With a suddenly empty slate and nothing better to do, he decided now was as good a time as any to play the Good Samaritan and deliver the lost phone back to its owner in person. Given the nervous way she’d acted around him before, so as not to freak her out still further by showing up at her door he’d just post it through her letterbox with a note explaining how he’d found it. And that would be that. His good deed done, he could wend his way back to his apartment, jump in the car and be home at Le Val sometime in the afternoon.

Ben munched the last of his croissant, paid his bill and then left the café and set off on foot in the direction of her address. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, the day was his to do with as he pleased, and he felt carefree and untroubled.

He had no idea what he was walking into. But he soon would. He was, in fact, about to meet Mademoiselle Romy Juneau for the second time. And from that moment, a whole new world of trouble would be getting ready to open up.

Chapter 3 (#uf400a57b-b30e-5b48-a121-0fcbff9e90b9)

Romy Juneau lived in a handsome 1920s period apartment building near the end of a busy little street called Rue Joséphine Beaugiron, fifteen minutes’ walk away, flanked by a travel agency and a corner bar-restaurant called Chez Bogart.

Like Ben’s own neighbourhood, the street hadn’t survived last night’s riot completely unscathed. The quaint old antiquarian bookshop opposite Romy’s building had taken a hit, and like Habib the grocer its owner was surveying the damage with a sour look of disgruntlement as two carpenters fitted a sheet of plywood over the broken window. Why anyone would attack a specialist book store filled with nothing but a bunch of dusty old tomes by dead writers, Ben couldn’t say. Maybe the rioters were intent on procuring some edifying literature to alleviate the boredom of throwing firebombs at the police.

Romy’s building had an art deco archway, once grand, now slightly grungy, on which someone had recently sprayed an obscene slogan about the president. It had tall carved double doors, firmly locked, with a smaller inset door, also firmly locked. On the wall by the door was a buzzer panel with twelve buttons, one for each apartment, each with a corresponding name plate with the initial and surname of the resident. R. Juneau was in apartment 11.

He pressed the button for apartment 6, labelled J. Vanel, waited for some guy’s voice to crackle ‘Qui est-ce?’ out of the speaker grille, and said he had a delivery for Vanel that needed signing for. A moment later the buzzer buzzed and the inset door clicked open, and Ben pushed through into a brick foyer that led to a small interior courtyard. A short, stumpy concierge lady with curlers in her hair was sweeping the floor and barely glanced at Ben as he walked in. The hallway walls were streaked with dirt and a row of wheelie bins smelled of mouldy garbage. Not the best-kept apartment building in Paris, but not the worst either, not these days.

To his left was the door to the concierge’s ground-floor apartment, to his right a spiral stairway with a worn antique banister rail. Set into the centre of the stairway was an original period cage lift apparently still in service, all ornate black wrought iron. A Gothic death trap, to Ben’s eye. On the opposite wall were fixed twelve separate grey steel mailboxes, one for each resident, marked with their names. He took Romy’s phone from his pocket, along with his notebook and pen. He wrote a brief note to the effect that he was returning her property, signed it, folded it inside the phone’s leather wallet and was about to pop it into her mailbox when he noticed that two of the other boxes had had their locks forced open with something like a screwdriver, the grey paint scratched through to the bare metal.

Hardly the most confidence-inspiring level of security. The building was obviously a little too soft a target for thieves, unlike Ben’s place which had a hardened steel security door you’d need a cutting torch to break through. He didn’t want to have gone to the trouble of returning Romy’s phone to her, only for it to be nicked by some light-fingered opportunist punk before she could get to it. He decided to hand it to her in person, face to face. She’d surely realise she had nothing to be frightened of, if he smiled a lot and acted his usual charming self. If she asked how he’d found her address, he’d admit the truth and advise her to erase her own number from her contacts list because it made her far too easy to track online. There were too many suspicious characters around these days to be taking risks.

Choosing the stairs over the Gothic death trap, he started to climb. The stairs were worn and creaky with age, spiralling up around the central lift shaft. The first-floor landing had apartments numbers 1 to 3, the second floor numbers 4 to 6. By his reckoning that made number 11 the middle door on the fourth floor, right at the top of the building.

As he headed towards the third floor, Ben heard the rattle and judder of the lift descending, sounding like it was going to shake itself apart and bring the whole building down, and he was glad he’d taken the stairs. Through the wrought-iron bars he saw the lift’s passenger, a lone man making his way down from an upper floor. Ben gave him only the briefest of glances, but his eye was trained to notice details. The guy was standing with his back to Ben and his face turned away. He was broad-shouldered and well built, about Ben’s height at a shade under six feet. He wore black leather gloves and a long dark coat, quality wool, expensive, with the collar turned up. His hair was short and black, silvering in streaks. Ben caught a whiff of aftershave. The man didn’t turn around as the death trap rattled on its way downwards.

Ben watched the lift disappear below him between floors, then kept on climbing the stairs. A strange, vague feeling had suddenly come over him, as though something at the back of his mind was needling him. He had no idea what it was, and quickly forgot about it.

Moments later he reached the top floor. As he’d guessed, apartment 11 was the middle door of the uppermost three apartments. He paused on the landing for a moment, thinking of the most innocuous way to introduce himself. Honesty and openness were the best policy. She would soon realise he was the friendliest and least menacing guy on the planet. At any rate, he could be that guy when he wanted.

He removed the handwritten note from her phone case, since he’d no longer need it. Then raised his hand to ring the doorbell with a knuckle. Force of habit. In his past line of work, leaving fingerprints often wasn’t a good idea.

Then he stopped. Because he’d suddenly noticed that her door wasn’t locked. Not just unlocked, but hanging open an inch. He used his fist to nudge it gently open a few inches more, and peeked through the gap. The apartment had a narrow entrance passage papered in tasteful pastel blue, with glossily varnished floorboards. There were four interior doors leading off the hallway, one at the far end and one to the left, both closed, and two more to the right, both of which were open though Ben couldn’t see into the rooms from where he stood.

He called out in French, ‘Hello? Anybody there? Mademoiselle Juneau?’ He hoped it wasn’t being too sexist to assume her marital status.

There was no reply. Ben tentatively stepped inside the hall passage. He felt uneasy about doing it, since a lone male stranger didn’t ideally want to be seen to be lurking in the apartment of a young single woman.

The first odd thing he noticed was the smell of something burning, which seemed to be coming from the nearer open door on the right. The second was the little stand in the passage that had been knocked over on its side across the middle of the hallway floor. A pretty ceramic dish lay smashed on the floorboards, various keys scattered nearby. The camel coat Romy Juneau had been wearing earlier looked like it had been yanked down from a hook by the entrance and was lying rumpled on the floor.

Ben moved a little further up the passage, stepped past the coat and the fallen stand, and peered around the edge of the first open door on the right. The door led to a small kitchen, clean and neat, with worktops and cupboards the same pastel blue as the hallway and a table for one next to a window overlooking the street side of the building. The burning smell was coming from a coffee percolator that had been left on the gas stove. It had bubbled itself dry and was giving off smoke. Ben went in and took the coffee off the heat, using a kitchen cloth because it was hot. Then he quickly flipped off the gas burner with a knuckle. Force of habit, again.

Whoever had been in the middle of making coffee had taken a carton of non-fat milk from the fridge and a delicate china cup and saucer from the cupboard and laid them out ready on the worktop next to a little pot of Demerara sugar and a tiny silver spoon. All very dainty and feminine. Ben presumed that someone was the apartment’s occupant. So where was she, and what was all the mess in the hallway?

By now the alarm bell was jangling in the back of his mind. Something wasn’t quite right. He stepped back out into the hallway and called again, a little more loudly, ‘Hello? Mademoiselle Juneau?’

Still no reply. He nudged open the closed door to the left, which was a bedroom. Romy Juneau evidently had a thing for that shade of blue. It was everywhere, the bed covers, the curtains, the walls. But she wasn’t in the room. He stepped up to the further open door on the right, which he now saw led to a salon.

It was inside the salon that Ben now saw Mademoiselle Romy Juneau for the second time.

It would be the last time.

Chapter 4 (#ulink_fe0ce73c-59a6-54f8-993d-ac94ceb86cc8)

As far as Romy Juneau was concerned, she would only ever have met Ben on the single occasion they’d bumped into one another in Rue Georges Brassens. She was oblivious of their second encounter, and always would be, because she was lying sprawled on the Persian rug inside her living room with a broken neck. That much Ben could tell at a glance from the unnatural angle of her head to her body.

He stood frozen in the doorway for an instant. He had seen many dead people before now. But never quite in such circumstances. His shoulders dropped and something tightened inside his throat at the pathetic sight of her lying there. The leather satchel she’d been carrying earlier had been emptied and left lying along with its contents on the rug a few feet away.

He went over to her and knelt next to the body. She was very still, with that special quality of inertia that only death can confer on a person. If there had been any blood, it would have been easy to see against the white cashmere top she was wearing. It looked as though a single strike to the neck had killed her. Ben looked around him for any kind of impact weapon, but there was nothing. A very strong man could have done it using his bare hands, but it would have taken a blow of tremendous force.

Her eyes were open and staring sightlessly straight at him, the vividness of their colour faded like the wings of a dead butterfly. Ben reached out and laid two fingers on the side of her throat. He had expected no pulse and found none. Her soft skin was still warm, also expected, because this had happened to her only minutes ago. While she’d been waiting for her coffee to brew.

Her death touched Ben deep, though he didn’t know why. It was as if he’d known her, somehow. As if part of his mind was trying to reconnect with an old scrambled memory lost somewhere in the murk of the dim and distant past. It was a strange feeling.

He lingered next to her body for a couple more seconds, then stood up and walked grimly to the living-room window. It was the archetypal Parisian floor-to-ceiling iron window with the ornate knobs and designer rust, flanked by gauzy white drapes. It overlooked the same side of the building as the kitchen. He looked out at the street below. The carpenters had finished fixing the plywood to the bookshop window. Cars, vans, bikes were passing by on the road, pedestrians strolling along the pavements, normal city life going on as usual.