Sauvage paused and then said, “Destroy your burn phone and lay low for a while. It’ll be a few days before I can come see you.”
“Done,” Haja said simply, and hung up.
She went to the bedroom window, breaking the phone and removing the SIM card. There was scaffolding outside the window. The building’s owners were having the exterior plaster replaced and painted.
Haja opened the window and looked down through the scaffolding, past a flower box on a lower floor, to a Dumpster in the alley below. She tossed the phone parts, watched them fall, all the while wondering whether she should be in a hurry to be long gone from Paris.
Chapter 91
18th Arrondissement
10 a.m.
“WE ARE HERE to see my nephew,” Louis said when we reached the nurses’ station outside the intensive care unit at Bretonneau Hospital. “Alain Du Champs?”
The nurse on duty grimaced bitterly and said, “Doubt they’ll let you in to see him. He’s got a police guard. They think he firebombed the mosque before he was beaten by people trying to save it.”
“A horrible thing,” Louis said. “I don’t know how he came to this. But perhaps I should talk with the police officer? I used to work for La Crim.”
She shrugged and then gestured with her chin down the hall. “Down the hall, left, then first door on your right.”
I hung back while Louis spoke with the officer sitting outside Du Champs’s room. At first I thought he was going to turn us down, but then Louis gestured to me. The officer had changed his mind.
“Merci,” he said, nodding at me as we went by him toward the door.
“What’d you tell him?” I whispered to Louis in English.
“The truth,” Louis said. “You saved that police officer in Sevran last night. It was enough to get us a few minutes.”
We went through hospital curtains and found Alain Du Champs lying in a bed, looking as though he’d been everyone’s favorite punching bag. His face was swollen almost beyond recognition. A few of his front teeth were missing, and his arm had six or seven pins jutting out of it.
“Detectives?” he slurred. “I’m not saying nothing ’til I talk to my attorney.”
“We work for Private Paris,” Louis said. “You’ve heard of us?”
Through the swelling, Du Champs’s eyes moved to study us.
“I’ve heard,” he said.
“Speak English?” I asked.
“Little,” he said.
“How long have you been a photographer?” I asked.
“Not about the mosque?” he said.
“No,” Louis said.
“Ten years,” Du Champs said, running his tongue along the gums where his teeth had been. “Since I got my first camera, when I was nine. Loved it.”
“Take a lot of photographs?” I asked.
“Can always throw the bad ones out.”
“Remember the girl you sang to last week near the mosque?” Louis said.
“I don’t sing.”
“Really?” I said, and then sang, “‘Wake up, Fatima, don’t let me wait. You Muslim girls start much too late’?”
The kid broke into a painful smile and laughed as if his ribs were broken. “I remember now. She was hot.”
“Any chance you took a picture of her?”
“Who is she?”
I said, “She may have been involved in the Sevran bombing last night.”
“Yes?” he said, the gears of his brain meshing and spinning. “So a pic of her could be a get-out-of-jail-free card? ’Cause I did not set that mosque on fire. I was in the area taking pictures and got attacked.”
“Did you get a picture of her?” Louis demanded.
“Had to,” he replied, grinning painfully. “That sweet Fatima was one of a kind.”
Chapter 92
17th Arrondissement
11:15 a.m.
OUTSIDE A CAFÉ near the headquarters of La Crim, we found Investigateur Hoskins and Juge Fromme drowning their sorrows in a bottle of wine.
“Kind of early to be drinking on the job,” Louis said.
“We’re off the job,” Juge Fromme said miserably.
Hoskins nodded. “Counter-terror and the military are taking over.”
“Guess you’re not the people we want to show this to then,” Louis said, sliding his iPhone across the table.
“It’s her,” I said. “The woman on the bus.”
Fromme set his wine down and fumbled for his reading glasses. Hoskins peered at the photograph, and then used her fingers to blow it up.
Du Champs had caught her from an odd angle: looking up and in three-quarter profile, from the chest of her brown robe to the top of her brown head scarf.
“You said the woman on the bus was a redhead with nickel-gray eyes,” Fromme said. “This woman has dark hair and brown eyes.”
“Contacts and rinsable dyes,” Louis said.
“It’s her,” I insisted. “There’s no doubt in my mind.”
“How can you be sure from this angle?” Hoskins said. “You can barely see the right side of her face.”
“When I close my eyes, I know they’re the same person,” I said. “This picture should be given to every media outlet in the country.”
“That won’t happen,” the magistrate said. “This woman has rights. If you’re wrong and we say she’s a suspect, we could be destroying her reputation.”
“And putting her in harm’s way,” Hoskins agreed.
Incredulous, I said, “So you’re not going to use this?”
Fromme said, “We’ll pass the photograph along, and your thoughts on it, but I highly doubt this will become a focus of the investigation unless some other evidence comes forward to support it.”
“Like what?” Louis demanded.
“Another picture would help,” Hoskins said. “And it would be better if she was caught climbing off the bus somewhere. But again, there are not many public security cameras in France.”
“Someone should check all the cameras around Sevran, at least,” I said.
“We’ll recommend that as well,” the magistrate said, and picked up his glass of wine again.
“That’s it?” I said.
“For us,” Hoskins said. “I’m going home and sleeping for as long as I can.”
“You’re making a mistake,” I said.
“We don’t make the laws,” Fromme said. “We just enforce them.”
I was still furious when we were a block away, and I noticed Louis lagging behind me and limping hard.
“Have you had that knee checked?” I asked.
“It will pass,” Louis said. “It always does.”
“Go get it checked. That’s an order. You’re no good to me like this.”
He looked ready to argue, but then nodded. “I have an old friend, Megan, who specializes in knees.”
“Go see Megan,” I said. “Or at least go somewhere where you can get it elevated and on ice.”
“It does feel like shit,” Louis said.
“Get a taxi. I’m going for a walk.”
“How can I contact you?”
“I’ll buy a phone and text you the number,” I said, and left him there.
Chapter 93
I WANDERED OUT of the Batignolles neighborhood and headed south toward the river. The sun had broken through the clouds and it had gotten quite warm-easily in the high seventies. Coming upon a phone store a few blocks later, I bought a disposable Samsung and texted Louis the number. I also asked him to send me the picture. It appeared almost immediately, along with the news that Megan, his doctor friend, was going to see him at once.
“Good news,” I texted back. “Keep me posted.”
Given the violent events of the prior night, a surprising number of Parisians were out walking or jogging along the Seine. I didn’t know if they were defying AB-16 or just ignoring the group and its threat.