"It's everyone's business now. And I need information."
The tension was mounting, but Paul detected a strange familiarity in their exchange. A complicity between fire and ice that had nothing to do with this investigation.
"I have nothing to say" she repeated. "The neighborhood will close in around this affair. As it always does."
Her words, voice and tone made Paul observe her more closely. She was fixing her dark eyes, topped with red gilt, on the Cipher. They made him think of strips of chocolate filled with orange rind. But, more importantly, he suddenly understood the truth of the situation: Gozar Halman was the Turkish woman whom Schiffer had almost married. What had happened? Why had it fallen through?
The fur seller lit a cigarette. A long languid drag of blue smoke. "What do you want to know?"
"When did she deliver her coats?"
At the end of the day"
"Alone?"
"Yes, always alone."
"Do you know which way she came?"
"Via Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière. At that time, the streets are crowded, if that's your next question."
Schiffer turned to generalities. "When did Ruya Berkes arrive in Paris?"
“May 2001. Haven't you seen Marius?"
He ignored the question. "What sort of woman was she?"
"A peasant. But she had also lived in the city"
" Adana?"
"First Gaziantep, then Adana."
Schiffer leaned over. He seemed interested by this detail. "She came from Gaziantep?"
"Yes, I think so."
He was pacing round the room, his fingers idling over the knickknacks. "Was she literate?"
"No, but she was modern. Not a slave of tradition."
"Did she go out in Paris? Go for walks? Go out to nightclubs?"
"I said modern, not loose. She was a Muslim. You know as well as I do what that means. Anyway she didn't speak a word of French.”
“How did she dress?"
“As a Westerner," she said, her voice rising. "Schiffer, what are you after?"
"I'm trying to work out how the killer jumped her. It isn't easy to approach a girl who never goes out, never speaks to anyone and has no leisure activities."
His questions were leading nowhere. They were the same as an hour before, and were eliciting the same inevitable answers. Paul stood in front of the bay window, looking over the courtyard, and drew aside the curtain. The Turks were still working away; money was changing hands, above furs that were curled up like sleeping animals.
Behind him, Schiffer's voice pressed on: "What was Ruya's state of mind?"
"Like all the others: 'My body is here; my heart is back there.' All she wanted to do was to go home, get married and have children. She was here in transit. The daily round of a worker ant, stuck in front of her sewing machine, sharing a two-room apartment with two other women."
"I want to question her roommates…"
Paul stopped listening and observed the comings and goings downstairs. These exchanges were like bartering, an ancestral ritual. The Cipher's voice broke into his mind once more.
"And what do you think about the murderer?"
There was a long enough silence to make Paul turn back toward the room.
Gozar had stood up and was now staring out of the window at the rooftops. Without moving, she murmured, "I think it is more… political." Schiffer went over to her. "What do you mean?"
She spun around. "This affair could go above and beyond the interests of a single killer."
"Gozar, explain yourself!"
"I have nothing to explain. The whole neighborhood's scared, and I'm no exception. No one will help you."
Paul shivered. The Moloch in his nightmare, with the quarter in his clutches, seemed more real than ever. A god of stone looking for its prey in the cellars and hovels of Little Turkey.
The teyze concluded, "This conversation's over, Schiffer."
The cop pocketed his notepad and, without trying to insist, walked away. Paul took a last look at the negotiations downstairs.
It was then that he spotted him.
A deliveryman-black mustache and blue Adidas jacket-had just arrived in the warehouse, his arms laden with a box. He automatically looked up at the mezzanine. When he saw Paul. his face froze.
He put down his load, said something to one of the laborers by the coat hangers, then withdrew toward the door. His final glance up at the platform confirmed what Paul had sensed. He was frightened.
The two officers went down to the lower floor. Schiffer spat: "That stubborn bitch really pisses me off with her subtle hints. Fucking Turks. Warped, every one of them…"
Paul sped up and leapt out of the door. He peered down the stairwell. A brown hand was skidding along the banister. The man was running away. He muttered to Schiffer as he arrived on the landing, "Come on. Quick."
36
Paul ran as far as the car. He got in and turned the ignition key in one movement.
Schiffer just had time to get in beside him. "'What's going on?" he grumbled.
Without answering, Paul pulled off. The figure had just swerved right at the end of Rue Sainte-Cécile. Paul accelerated and turned into Rue du Faubourg-Poissonière, once again coming up against the crowds and chaos.
The man was walking quickly, slipping between the deliverymen, the passersby, the smoke of the pancake and pita sellers, glancing around nervously over his shoulder. He was heading toward Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle.
Schiffer said moodily, "Are you going to explain yourself, or what?" Paul shifted into third gear and murmured, "There was a man at Gozar's place. When he spotted us, he ran away"
"So what?"
"He smelled us out. He's afraid of being questioned. Maybe he knows something about our business."
Their customer now turned left, into Rue d'Enghien. Luckily for them, he was walking in the direction of the traffic.
"Or he doesn't have a work permit," Schiffer muttered.
At Gozar's? Who does? No, this guy's got a special reason to be afraid. I can just sense it."
The Cipher stuck his knees up against the dashboard. He asked gloomily, "Where is he?"
"Left pavement. The Adidas jacket."
The Turk was still heading up the street. Paul tried to follow him as discreetly as possible. A red light. The silvery blue form grew more distant. Paul felt that Schiffer's stare was following him, too. The silence in the car was marked by a particular depth: they had understood each other; they now shared the same calm, the same attention, concentrating on their target.
Green.
Paul pulled off, gently pressing on the pedals, feeling an intense heat rising up his legs. He accelerated, just in time to see the Turk swerve right, into Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, still in the direction of the traffic.
Paul followed, but the street was jammed, blocked, suffocating in a mass that was casting up into the gray air its din of cries and hooting horns.
He bent his neck and squinted. Above the cars and the heads were rows of shop signs-wholesale, retail, retail-wholesale… The Adidas jacket had disappeared. Paul looked farther. The façades of the buildings were fading away in the mist of pollution. At the far end, the arch of Porte Saint-Denis was glimmering in the smoky light.
"I can't see him anymore."
Schiffer opened his window. The din burst into the car. He pushed his head outside. "Farther up," he said. "To the right."
The traffic started moving. The blue patch stood out against a group of pedestrians. Another stop. Paul said to himself that the jam was playing into their hands, by letting them drive at walking pace and so keep tabs on him…
The Turk vanished again, then reappeared between two delivery trucks, just in front of Le Sully café. He kept glancing around. Had he spotted them?
"He's shitting himself" Paul commented. "He knows something.”
“That doesn't mean a thing. There's not an icicle's chance in hell-”
“Trust me. Just this once." Paul shifted to first gear again. His neck was burning and the collar of his parka was damp with sweat. He accelerated and caught up with the Turk at the end of Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis.