Paul downed his coffee in one gulp. Over his burning bile, he said, "Don't forget, Schiffer, the slightest fuckup and…"
"You arrest me. I haven't forgotten. Anyway, this morning we're changing tactics." He waggled his fingers as though manipulating a puppet. "We're now playing it softly, softly"
They left the café and headed out to the Golf.
With the police light flashing, they took the bypass. The grayness of the Seine, added to the granite of the sky and the riverbanks, made for a smoothly monotonous world. Paul liked this crushingly dull and depressing weather. It made for another hurdle for this energetically willful officer to cross.
On the way, he listened to the messages on his cell phone. Bomarzo the magistrate wanted an update. His voice was tense. Paul now had just two days before he was going to put more officers from the Brigade Criminelle onto the case. Naubrel and Matkowska were pursuing their investigations. They had spent the previous day with the "moles," workmen who dig into the depths of Paris and decompress every evening in specially built chambers. They had questioned the managers of eight different companies and drawn a blank. They had also paid a call on the main manufacturer of these chambers, in Arcueil. According to the boss, the idea that a decompression chamber had been used by someone who was not a qualified engineer was absolutely ridiculous. Did this mean that the killer had such knowledge. or was it a false lead? The officers were now continuing their investigations in other sectors of industry.
When they reached Place du Chatelet, Paul spotted a patrol car turning up Boulevard de Strasbourg. He caught up with it by Rue des Lombards, and motioned to the driver to stop.
"Just a second," he told Schiffer.
From the glove compartment, he took the Kinder Surprises and chewy sweets he had bought an hour before. In his hurry, the bag tore and its contents fell onto the floor. Blushing with embarrassment, Paul picked them up and got out of the car.
The uniformed officers had stopped and were waiting beside their car, thumbs hooked over their belts. Paul rapidly explained what he wanted them to do, then spun around.
When he sat back down behind the wheel, the Cipher waved a sweet in the air. "Wednesday-no school for the kids."
Paul pulled off without responding.
"I used to use patrol cars as messengers, too. To take my girlfriends presents-"
"Your employees, you mean."
"That's right, kid, that's right…" Schiffer unwrapped the bar of caramel and folded it into his mouth. "How many kids have you got?”
“One daughter."
"How old is she?"
"Seven."
"What's her name?"
"Céline."
"A bit fancy for a cop's kid."
Paul thought so, too. He had never understood why Reyna, the Marxist idealist, had given their child such a precious name.
Schiffer was chewing away. And the mother?
"Divorced."
Paul drove through a red light and past Rue Réaumur. The fiasco of his marriage was the last thing he wanted to discuss with Schiffer. With relief, he spotted the red-and-yellow McDonald's sign that stood at the beginning of Boulevard de Strasbourg.
He sped up, not giving his partner the chance to ask any more questions.
Their hunting ground was in sight.
34
At 10:00, Boulevard de Strasbourg looked like a battlefield in full fury. The sidewalks and roads themselves dissolved into a single frenetic mass of passersby, slipping in between a maze of trapped, hooting vehicles.
Above them, the sky was colorless, as taut as a tarpaulin full of water, about to split at any moment.
Paul decided to park at the corner of Rue des Petites-Ecuries and follow Schiffer, who was already making his way through the cardboard boxes being carried on men's backs, their arms hung with clothing and the loads wobbling on the trolleys. They turned down Passage de Industrie and found themselves beneath an arch of stone, leading to an alleyway.
Sürelik's workshop was in a brick building, propped up by a framework of riveted metal. The façade was gabled. with a Gothic arch, glazed tympanums and sculpted terra-cotta friezes. The bright red edifice oozed a sort of enthusiasm, a cheerful faith in the future of industry, as though someone inside had just invented sliced bread.
A few yards from the door, Paul grabbed Schiffer by the lapels of his coat and pushed him under the porch. He then searched him thoroughly to check that he was not armed.
The old cop tutted reprovingly. "You're wasting your time, kid. Softly, softly, like I said."
Paul turned around without a word and headed toward the workshop.
Together, they pushed open the metal door and entered a large square space with white walls and a painted cement floor. Everything was spick-and-span. The light green metal structures, bulging with rivets, reinforced the overall sensation of solidity. Large windows let in oblique rays of light, while galleries ran along each wall, like the bridges of an oceangoing liner.
Paul had been expecting a pit; what he found was an artist's studio. About forty workers, all of them men, were neatly spaced out and laboring behind their sewing machines, surrounded by cloth and open boxes. In their overalls, they looked like special agents stitching up coded messages during the war. A cassette recorder was playing some Turkish music. A coffeepot was sizzling on a gas hot plate. A craftsman's paradise.
Schiffer stamped on the floor with his heel. "What you were imagining is downstairs. In the cellars. Hundreds of female workers crammed together like sardines. Illegal immigrants, the lot of them. We're inside now, but this is only the respectable front."
He pulled Paul toward the machines, walking between the workers, who forced themselves not to look up. "Lovely, aren't they? Model workers, my boy. Industrious, obedient, disciplined."
"Why be so sarcastic?"
"The Turks aren't hardworking at all. They're spongers. They aren't obedient. They're indifferent. They aren't disciplined. They follow their own rules. They're a load of fucking vampires. Pillagers who can't even be bothered to learn our language… What's the point? They're just here to earn as much as they can, then piss off back home. Their motto is `Take it all, leave nothing.' " Schiffer grabbed Paul by the arm. "They're a plague, my boy"
Paul pushed him away violently.
"Never call me that again."
He looked up as if Paul had just threatened him with a gun. He stared at him quizzically. Paul wanted to tear that expression off his face, but then a voice sounded behind them.
"What can I do for you, gentlemen?" A squat man, dressed in spotless blue overalls, was coming toward them, an oily smile glued under his mustache. "Ah, Inspector!" he said in astonishment. "It's been so long since I've had the pleasure of seeing you!"
Schiffer burst out laughing. The music had stopped. The activity of the machines had ceased. A deathly silence reigned.
"Aren't we on first-name terms anymore?"
Instead of replying, the workshop's boss looked over distrustfully at Paul.
"This is Paul Nerteaux," the cop continued. "He's a police captain.
And my immediate boss. But he's above all a pal." He slapped Paul on the back and grinned. "You can trust him like you can trust me."
Then he went over to the Turk and put his arm around the man's shoulders. The ballet was choreographed down to the slightest movement. "Let me introduce you to Ahmid Zoltanoi," he said to Paul. "The best workshop manager in all of Little Turkey. As starchy as his overalls, but with a heart of gold, deep down. People round here call him Tanoi."