Isabelle said, ‘I think we should go in and have a look.’
Carnier said, ‘You sure? What happens if Ramdani comes back while we’re in there?’
‘We’ll put people outside to stop him coming in. We tell him that a smell of gas has been reported and we’re required to check it out for safety reasons. So no one is allowed into the building while we do that. If he goes away your people will follow him, Alex.’
‘And if the others turn up?’
‘We tell them the same thing. They have to wait till the all-clear is given. I hope none of that happens, but I think it’s a chance we have to take. It doesn’t make any sense that the meet didn’t take place. Ramdani wouldn’t have had much time to change the plans, so it would have to have been a change from the other end. But whatever’s happened, we’re now out of touch with the jihadis – that’s worrying, to say the least. I’m hoping there may be something in the flat that indicates what they’re up to.’
As Carnier digested this, he looked at Seurat, who stayed silent – Isabelle had just decided to do what he’d been hoping she would, but it was certainly risky and he wondered what Liz would have done.
Finally, Carnier shrugged. ‘OK. I’ll set it up.’
Isabelle nodded. ‘We’ll need the locksmith – I don’t want any doors broken down. The idea of this is to keep it as quiet as possible. A discreet entry, a quick search by officers with concealed weapons to make sure he’s not there, then I’ll go in.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Seurat immediately. Carnier looked at him dubiously. Isabelle said quickly, ‘It’s all right, Alex. Martin knows more than anyone else what we’re looking for.’
Chapter 47
The sky was pitch-black now, and the corridor was only dimly lit by the few bulbs that were working. Seurat could just make out the two armed officers who were to go in first in case Ramdani was there. They were wearing fluorescent yellow jackets with ‘GAZ’ written on the back. One of them carried a bag, its contents not usual for a gas fitter.
Their instructions were to get inside the flat as quickly and quietly as they could and to avoid, if at all possible, attracting the attention of the other inhabitants in the block. The previous summer had seen three nights of rioting at this estate, which had started when the arrest of a drug dealer had gone wrong and a child had been shot. The last thing Isabelle wanted was anything to happen that might make trouble flare up again, alert Ramdani and the jihadis and send them off on another tack.
As the ‘gas men’ approached the door of Ramdani’s flat, Seurat and Isabelle waited at the end of the corridor. It was dinner time and quiet except for the sound of television coming from the flats. At each end of the corridor two more men in yellow GAZ jackets stood ready to detain anyone who tried to come along the corridor.
The first policeman rang the buzzer and knocked on the door. They all waited tensely in silence, and suddenly a door opened. But it was not the one to Ramdani’s flat. An old lady came out of the next apartment; Isabelle groaned.
‘Who the hell are you?’ the old lady was demanding. She had her stick with her and waved it threateningly at the men standing by Ramdani’s door.
‘It’s perfectly all right, Madame,’ said the senior of the men politely. ‘Just go back inside, if you don’t mind. We’ve had a report of a smell of gas coming from this flat and we need to go inside to investigate. It is probably nothing serious but we need to check. Do you know whether your neighbour is in?’
‘I’ve no idea where he is,’ she said. ‘It’s not my business to keep track of my neighbours. But if he’s not answering the door, I suppose he’s out. What are you going to do – break his door down?’
‘No, Madame, there’ll be no need for that,’ replied the ‘gas man’, soothingly. ‘Now if you’d just like to go inside out of the cold, we’ll check it out. I don’t think there’s any problem but better safe than sorry.’ And he ushered her gently back inside her flat and waited until she closed the door.
There was a sigh of relief from the end of the corridor as Isabelle let out her pent-up breath. ‘He did well,’ said Seurat. ‘That old lady reminds me of my grandmother. Terribly nosy, absolutely fearless, and won’t take any nonsense from anyone.’
The man with the bag started work on the lock. It took him only seconds to have the door open and the two officers went inside. Isabelle and Seurat went up to the front door but they waited outside by the door as the armed officers went through the apartment. After a few minutes they came back to the external corridor. ‘The place is empty.’
‘All right, thank you very much,’ Isabelle said. ‘Stay here please. I don’t think we’ll be very long, and then you can go and tell the old lady that everything’s fine. Hopefully she’ll forget about us.’ In her grey parka and jeans Isabelle cut an unremarkable figure, but she was clearly in charge. ‘All right, Martin? Time to have a look around, eh?’
They started in the living room at the front of the flat. There were thin curtains hanging at the window but they were not drawn. An unshaded bulb hanging from the centre of the ceiling was switched on. The room was tidy but minimally furnished with a threadbare sofa, one grubby armchair that had a rip in the fabric on its back, and a low table marked by the rings of mugs and glasses, on which was a two-day-old copy of Libération and a newspaper in Arabic.
The centre of the floor was covered by a faded carpet, the floorboards visible round the edges, and there was an electric fan heater in one corner that wasn’t plugged in. There were no cupboards, desks or anything else that might contain papers, and no laptop or other electronic device. A new-looking television set on a stand in one corner of the room was the only thing that looked as if it had cost any significant sum.
Down the corridor, back towards the front door, was a small kitchen. There were cupboards above and below a worktop on one side of the room; the officers had left them open. Seurat peered in at their small collection of tins, cereal boxes, small bags of flour and sugar, a carton of salt, and an old jam jar full of couscous. The fridge was almost empty – wilted stalks of celery, three eggs in a little rack, a half-full milk carton and a chunk of hard cheese that looked as though it had been there for a good long time.
‘If this guy was expecting visitors he hasn’t exactly stocked up to feed them,’ Seurat said.
Isabelle was examining the oven and grill. ‘Thank God it’s gas,’ she said. ‘I suddenly wondered if these flats only had electricity.’
Opposite the kitchen was a small bathroom. There was a bath with a shower over it and a plastic shower curtain. It was bone-dry. No one had taken a shower or a bath for a long time. The sink was streaked with the detritus of Ramdani’s last shave – little black hairs that studded the basin like steel filings. On the porcelain top a razor lay carelessly askew, next to a can of shaving foam, its cap off. Seurat opened the mirrored front of the small bathroom cabinet and saw one stick of roll-on deodorant, a box of plasters, a pair of tweezers and an opened pack of razor blades.
‘Looks as though he doesn’t have a beard,’ was Seurat’s comment.
Behind him Isabelle was pulling at the wooden slats on the side of the bath, but they wouldn’t give. She said, ‘I don’t think he’s hiding under there. Not if he ever planned on coming out.’
Seurat snorted. ‘I have to say, this all seems unnecessarily grim. I don’t have any clear picture of Ramdani, but this flat barely feels lived in.’