On the Grands Boulevards, Saïd walks determinedly, blind to the two men who are following him at a distance, armed with their umbrellas. He calculates the number of tricks he’ll have to perform in the Adamantium’s toilets in order to pay for his gram of cocaine. Maybe he’ll have to take amphetamines: they’re not as good, but not as expensive either. Though they last longer. But anyway. Five minutes to pull a client, five minutes to locate an empty cubicle, five minutes for the trick, so a quarter of an hour altogether, three tricks should be enough, maybe two if he finds a couple of really horny rich guys—and surely the Adamantium wants to attract VIPs? It doesn’t look like a cheap lesbian junkie kind of place. All being well, he’ll have the drugs in an hour. But the two men have drawn closer, and just as he is about to cross Boulevard Poissonnière, the first one points his umbrella down and stabs him in the leg through his stonewashed jeans while the second—as Saïd cries out, startled by the sudden pain—reaches inside his jacket and purloins the flyer from the pocket. By the time he has turned around, the two men have already run to the other side of the pedestrian crossing, and Saïd feels his leg throbbing. He also felt the furtive touch of the man’s hand on his chest, so he thinks the two men must have been pickpockets, and he checks that he still has his papers (he has no money), but his head starts to spin when he realizes they’ve stolen his invitation, and he runs after them, shouting, “My invitation! My invitation!” But he grows dizzy, feels weak, his vision blurs, his legs give way beneath him, and he stops in the middle of the road, puts his hand over his eyes, and collapses amid the blare of car horns.
Tomorrow, in Le Parisien Libéré, there will be stories about the deaths of two people: a twenty-year-old Algerian, victim of an overdose in the middle of the street, and a drug dealer tortured to death in the toilets of the Adamantium, a recently opened nightclub, which has now been closed by the authorities.
30
“Those guys are looking for something. The only question, Hamed, is why they didn’t find it.”
Bayard chews his cigarette. Simon fiddles with paper clips.
Barthes run over, Saïd poisoned, his dealer murdered, his apartment trashed … Hamed decided it was time to go to the police, because he didn’t tell them everything he knew about Roland Barthes: during their last meeting, Barthes gave him a paper. The clatter of typewriters echoes through the offices. The Quai des Orfèvres hums with police and administrative activity.
No, the people who searched his apartment didn’t find it. No, it is not in his possession.
How can he be sure, then, that they haven’t got hold of it? Because it wasn’t hidden in his room. And for a very good reason: he burned it.
Okay.
Did he read it first? Yes. Can he tell them what it’s about? Sort of. What’s it about? Silence.
Barthes asked him to learn the document by heart and destroy it immediately. Apparently, the semiologist believed that the southern accent was a mnemonic technique that facilitated memorization. Hamed did it because even if Roland was old and ugly with his paunch and his double chin, deep down he liked him, this old man who talked about his mother like a heartbroken kid, and anyway he was flattered that this famous professor should entrust him with a mission that didn’t, for a change, involve the insertion of a penis into his mouth, and also because Barthes had promised him three thousand francs.
Bayard asks: “Could you recite the text to us?” Silence. Simon has stopped his construction of a paper-clip necklace. Beyond the door, the clatter of typewriters continues.
Bayard offers the gigolo a cigarette, which he accepts with his gigolo’s reflex, even though he doesn’t like dark tobacco.
Hamed smokes the cigarette and remains silent.
Bayard repeats that he is clearly in possession of an important piece of information that has caused the deaths of at least three people and that until this information is made public his life is in danger. Hamed objects that, on the contrary, as long as his brain is the sole repository of this information, he cannot be killed. His secret is his life insurance policy. Bayard shows him the photographs of the dealer who was tortured in the toilets of the Adamantium. Hamed stares at them for a long time. Then he tips backwards on his seat and begins to recite: “Happy who like Ulysses has explored / Or he who sought afar the golden fleece…” Bayard shoots a questioning look at Simon, who explains that it is a poem by Du Bellay: “When shall I hail again my village spires / The blue smoke rising from that village see…” Hamed says he learned the poem at school and he still remembers it. He seems quite proud of his memory. Bayard makes it clear to Hamed that he can hold him in custody for twenty-four hours. Hamed tells him to go ahead and do it. Bayard lights another Gitane with the butt of the last one and mentally adjusts his tactics. Hamed cannot go back home. Does he have a safe place to stay? Yes, Hamed can sleep at his friend Slimane’s place, in Barbès. He should go there and lie low for a while, not go out to his usual haunts, not open the door to any strangers, be careful when he does go out, turn around frequently in the street … he should hide, basically. Bayard asks Simon to accompany Hamed in the car. His intuition tells him that the gigolo will confide more easily in a young non-cop than in an old cop, and anyway, unlike all those cops in novels and films, he has other cases on the go; he can’t devote 100 percent of his time to this one, even if Giscard has made it a priority, and even if Bayard voted for him.