‘The telephone’s not working.’
‘It is now.’ Soleiman put the instrument down beside the boss and took off the receiver with his foot. The dialling tone could be heard. Soleiman put the receiver back. ‘You see. And Meillant is in his office. In fact he’s waiting for your call. You’ve got to manage somehow, but you must get him to come here. As for me, I’ll leave a tape recorder here and I’ll go into the next room. I want to hear Meillant talking about the money he receives. I want to hear him say he’s a bastard.’
‘I can’t do that.’
No time to finish his sentence. Soleiman caught hold of his left hand, placed it on a corner of the table and brought down the strut from the chair on it. The hand cracked, the boss screamed. No movement in the building. The man sweated and wept.
‘I’ll call. Give me the phone.’
Soleiman handed him the instrument. Jencovitch got Meillant at once. Soleiman didn’t take his eyes off him.
‘I’ve been beaten up … The militants from the Committee … Photos, and they know things … I’m alone, I’m afraid, come, I can’t move … My wife’s being questioned by the police about accounting problems … Yes, please, quickly …’
*
At the station Meillant hung up, looking preoccupied. Opposite him sat Lavorel, who had come to ask his advice about how to stop the circulation of black money between manufacturers and workrooms.
‘I can’t stay, sorry, a very urgent call.’
‘Not to worry, I understand very well, we’ll meet again. Nothing urgent.’
Lavorel went back to passage du Désir to wait for Daquin.
*
Jencovitch had hung up.
‘That’s a good boy.’
With his finger Soleiman wiped the tears away from the man’s face as he lay on the floor. Daquin had told him: ‘Keep him occupied until Meillant comes. It’ll take a long time. He mustn’t be allowed to recover.’
‘Tell me what you’re going to say to Meillant when he arrives?’
The boss, who was sweating, didn’t reply. Soleiman caught hold of his injured hand and squeezed it. Another yell.
‘What are you going to say to him?’
‘That I pay him, he must protect me.’
‘What do I want to hear?’
‘Yes, he’s had money, yes, he’s going to protect me.’
Soleiman quickly concealed a miniature tape recorder inside a sewing-machine. ‘If I get the tape I’ll give you the photo and you’ll never see me again. If something goes wrong the photos will go all round the Sentier and my buddies will come back and beat you on the back with iron bars. Can you still manage to understand that?’
The boss signalled that he could.
Soleiman bent over him. A dear memory of an icy day in Istanbul during the winter of ’78-’79, a mob of macho young men attacking gays and he was pushed along the ground against a wall. The assailant who was kicking him bent over, caught hold of him by his balls and yelled: ‘Hey, he’s still got some.’ And then nothing, a black hole.
Soleiman smiled and put his hand between the boss’s legs. A look of desperation. Don’t be frightened, you’re not going to die, not just yet. In a rapid movement his hand tightened over one of the balls, and the boss fainted.
Soleiman stood up again, went to the workroom door, took the bunch of keys out of the boss’s jacket, unlocked the door, replaced the keys in the pocket and waited on the landing.
From the other side of the crossroads Romero saw Meillant enter the building. Amazing. The crazy plan seemed to be working. Looking at his watch, he let two minutes go by, then walked calmly towards the building, went in and waited on the landing.
Soleiman heard Meillant coming up. He closed the door again, crossed the room and on the way stroked the boss’s hair: he was still unconscious. ‘Concentrate, it’s the right moment now.’ And he went into the next room. Daquin was there, leaning against a table. Smiled at him. They went to the back of the apartment, opened the service door, locked it again and waited on the landing. Be wary of Meillant, he’s an old hand.
Meillant came in and went straight to Jencovitch, lying unconscious against the wall, the telephone on the floor beside him. He looked him over: some pink froth at the corner of his mouth, his left hand out of shape, a swelling between his legs, the guy was clearly in a bad way. Meillant checked that he wasn’t dead and went rapidly round the apartment: one can never be too careful. Nobody there and the service door locked. Came back to Jencovitch who was beginning to come round. Meillant crouched down beside him.
‘What’s happened to you?’ Jencovitch cast a terrified look round. ‘We’re alone, you can talk.’
‘The guy from the other day, the one you threw down the stairs. He came back, with some of his buddies, after the workroom had closed.’ He had difficulty in getting his breath back. ‘They beat me up.’ Meillant waited for the rest. ‘They’ve got photos of you, with my wife, in my bed.’ A series of little sobs.
‘What do they want to do with them?’
‘They want to show them all round the district if I don’t pay. Commisaire, if those photos are circulated, I’m a dead man.’ Meillant thought he wouldn’t be too lively, either. ‘Commissaire, I’ve paid you 1,000 francs every month for five years.’ Jencovitch clutched Meillant’s jacket with one hand. ‘You know that, don’t you? You haven’t suddenly forgotten?’
‘Yes, I know that.’
‘You’re not going to let me down now?’
‘Let go of me and calm down. No, I’m not going to let you down. When do you have to pay?’
‘Tomorrow morning, here, at 7 o’clock.’
‘And how much?’
‘30,000 francs.’
‘Not too greedy, that means they intend to come back. Tomorrow morning I’ll be there with a few men. We’ll arrest the others, get the photos back by force and we’ll have them deported from France quickly. It won’t be said that anyone can get away with blackmailing the people I protect and not be punished for it. Now, I’ll help you get home and your wife will look after you when she comes back.’
There was a sound in the next room. Meillant raised his head and saw Daquin standing I the doorway. He stood up, without a word. Daquin called Romero, who came in.
‘Pick up this guy, get him as far as the local station and record his statement. After that, off to the hospital.’
Romero led Jencovitch away while Daquin took the tape recorder out of the sewing-machine and slipped it into his pocket. Meillant sat down on the corner of the table.
‘I was afraid of some underhand blow but I didn’t think it would come from you. What do you want?’
‘Don’t you want to know first what cards I’m holding?’ Meillant was silent. ‘Nothing very serious in one sense, but they all add up to something that will go down very badly just when the legalization of clandestine Turkish workers is being negotiated.’
Daquin put down on the table beside Meillant a photocopy of the accounts page taken from Martens and the photos of Meillant with Madame Jencovitch.
‘You’ve been regularly selling false papers, and some genuine ones as well, to the illegal workers in the Sentier. You make some workroom bosses pay for your protection. You’re very close to Thomas and his late wife, who don’t have a good press in the police force at the moment. I won’t mention how a member of the team negotiating with the ministry was beaten up last Wednesday, right here. As for the activities of your mistress, Anna Beric …’ Meillant reacted to that, ‘she’s a key person in the system of false invoices and black money that the Sentier lives on today. Without going back to the murder of her pimp. And she’s the woman in your life. It’s a rather heavy casebook, don’t you think?’
‘That’s enough, Daquin. What do you want?’
‘Two things. Your resignation. And the return of Anna Beric.’
A long pause for reflection.
‘Why my resignation?’
‘To protect those behind me.’ What would he have said if I’d replied: To please my lover?
Another silence.