I studied the menu, trying to get used to the noise echoing around the room. I had sat here alone or in company each time I visited Paris — sometimes very late at night, occasionally during the peaceful hours of the afternoon. I had once initiated a conversation with an American lady on the next table; it transpired that she was a doctor at a hospital in Tulsa. For some reason which I still don’t understand, I didn’t tell her that I was a doctor; instead I turned myself into an architect with a small practice in a town in Denmark. I must have been very drunk, I think, and amused by the idea of putting on a mask and pretending to be someone else. I vaguely remembered the meaningless and totally fictitious descriptions of a manor house I was busy designing.
I dismissed my memories of the American lady. After some indecision I plumped for a pasta dish and a beer. The waiter had beads of sweat on his forehead. Even before he had finished taking my order, he was on his way to another table.
My sense of being the oldest person was reinforced when I glanced around the restaurant. The waiters were young, and most of the diners were nowhere near my age. There was the odd middle-aged man or woman, but they were few and far between.
I ate my meal and ordered a Calvados with my coffee afterwards. By the time I emerged my head was a little woolly. I decided to walk all the way to the Swedish embassy on Rue Barbet-de-Jouy, near Varenne. I didn’t need a map to find my way from Montparnasse. All thoughts of my age had vanished; I was enjoying being out and about on the streets of Paris.
I went wrong more than once, and it took me a long time to reach the embassy. The gold-coloured sign below the Swedish state insignia informed me that the consular section was open. I went to a nearby cafe and had an espresso while I thought through the events that had been set in motion by Louise’s desperate phone call. I needed the embassy’s help to track her down and possibly to obtain legal representation and support.
I crossed the street and went inside. The woman on reception spoke Swedish with a French accent. I explained why I was there.
‘How old is your daughter?’ she asked.
‘She’s forty. She’s also expecting her first child.’
‘And you’re sure she’s been arrested?’
‘She wouldn’t lie about something like that.’
‘But she didn’t tell you where she was?’
‘She didn’t have time. That’s why I’m here.’
‘And she’s accused of being a pickpocket?’
‘I’m afraid that might be how she makes her living, but I’m not sure.’
She looked a little dubious. I nodded, hoping to make her understand that I wasn’t exaggerating. She picked up the phone and spoke to someone on the other end.
‘If you wait over there by the newspapers, Petra will come down and you can explain your business to her.’
‘My daughter is not “business”. She’s a person.’
I sat down by the newspapers and contemplated a portrait of the king and queen. It was crooked. I got up and gave it a push so that it was even more askew.
Petra couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old and looked like an overgrown child in her jeans and a thin top straining over a generous bust. She was frowning as she held out her hand.
She sat down and asked, ‘How can I help?’
‘Not here. This isn’t something to be discussed in a corner where people come to read the newspapers. I’m assuming you have an office?’
She looked at me with something I interpreted as distaste. I realised we wouldn’t be going anywhere.
I told her what had happened, giving dates and times, from Louise’s initial phone call to my arrival in Paris, and the fact that I hadn’t managed to contact her. I also explained that we hadn’t known about one another until Louise was an adult, and that I had only recently realised that she probably made her living as a pickpocket. At least sometimes. Hopefully not all the time.
I could see from Petra’s name badge that her surname was Munter, but it didn’t give a title. She took notes while I was talking, occasionally raising her hand to stop me until she had caught up.
‘This can’t be the first time a parent has turned up at the embassy, worried because their child has disappeared or ended up in prison,’ I said. ‘You must know what I ought to do.’
‘First of all we need to find out where she is. We have official channels.’
‘So you’re responsible for what the receptionist referred to as my “business”?’
‘I’m a trainee,’ Petra said. ‘I’m at the bottom of the heap. But I’m the one who kicks this upstairs or makes the decision not to pursue the matter.’
‘And you’re going to kick it upstairs?’
‘I think what you’ve told me is perfectly true.’
‘I’m worried about my daughter.’
She made a note of my mobile number and the name of my hotel.
‘We should know more tomorrow,’ she said, rising to her feet to indicate that the meeting was over.
‘My daughter is pregnant,’ I said again. ‘She was scared when she called me.’
Petra Munter gazed at me for a long time. She suddenly seemed to have grown up, no longer the teenager I had seen when she walked into reception.
‘I’ll make sure something is done, but the French don’t like foreign thieves operating here. They don’t exactly get a slapped wrist.’
‘So what do they get?’
She pulled a face but didn’t answer. I pictured Louise sitting in the same cellar where I had once spent the night.
Petra walked me to the door and I shook her hand.
‘Someone will contact you tomorrow,’ she said. ‘You have my word.’
As she walked away, I remembered something else.
‘I need a passport,’ I said. ‘A few weeks ago my house burned down. Everything was destroyed. I travelled here on a provisional passport, but I’d feel better if I had a proper one.’
‘We have an excellent machine here,’ she said. ‘It produces a Swedish passport within a very short time. But you could just as easily wait until you get back home.’
I left the embassy, making a mental note of the opening hours, and set off back to Montparnasse.
My mobile rang. There was a lot of traffic, so I hurried into a side street before I answered. It was a Swedish number that I didn’t immediately recognise.
It was Jansson.
‘I noticed you weren’t at home,’ he yelled.
Jansson always yells down the phone. He has never been able to accept that distance is irrelevant when he makes a call or when someone calls him. I remembered old fru Hultin, who lived on Vesselskär for a long time after she was widowed. I used to help her out with her bad feet now and again.
‘Jansson screams like a jay,’ she would say whenever he came up in the conversation. She herself spoke so quietly on the phone that it was hard to make out what she was saying. She probably thought that everyone in the archipelago was sitting by their phone, listening to the latest gossip about her corns.
‘How do you know I’m not at home?’
‘I happened to be passing. The police have been looking for you.’
‘They haven’t phoned me.’
‘They came by boat. Something to do with the fire.’
‘Have I been charged?’
‘I don’t know anything about that.’
‘So what did they say?’
‘They just asked if I knew where you were.’
‘But you didn’t?’
‘No.’
‘I left a note for Alexandersson before I left. He knows I’m away.’
‘So I don’t need to worry?’
‘Why would you worry? Was it you who set fire to my house?’
‘Why would you say such a thing?’
‘I’m in Paris.’
‘What the hell are you doing there?’