She’d spotted me too, an older guy not in sync with the rest of the clientele. I walked toward her, she greeted me quickly, in French but rolling her r’s, no warmth, scarcely polite; she accepted another glass, then abruptly took her gift and buried it in her purse. Without opening it.
“Strange, don’t you think, that she didn’t want to see what it was?” Yves looked up from his keyboard for a few seconds.
I shrugged. This had intrigued me at the time. But the girl’s haughty manners had hardly made me want to try and understand or linger in the bar. I was tired after my week in Milan, and the idea of a peaceful evening was rather attractive. Besides, very early on she’d given me hints that she wanted to leave, and she got up from her stool without waiting for me to finish my beer. With a half-hearted goodbye, she took her helmet, headed for the door at the entrance of rue Amelot, then froze abruptly, her hand on the doorknob. After turning around, she came back toward me, all smiles. She was really beautiful when she smiled.
A bit surprised, I’d taken a look outside, seen a few passersby, particularly a hefty guy a little older than me, kind of tough looking in a black three-piece suit. But he had turned his head away when he caught me looking at him, and by the time I asked Ilona about it, he’d disappeared. She herself had chosen to play the guilty party, so I could forgive her for her behavior.
“She came back just like that and apologized?”
“Yes. She was a strange girl.”
“And what about the guy in the suit? Did you ask her if she knew him?”
Nod. “She claimed she didn’t. At that point I had no reason to doubt her.”
Sydney didn’t seem convinced but went on: “And then what did you do?”
“She suggested dinner. We left the Pop’in and went to Oberkampf.” But, in fact, things didn’t happen that simply. After talking for another half hour inside, Ilona had made me climb up to the second floor and then back down again into the bar’s concert hall. There we zigzagged between full tables so as to leave through an emergency exit that led to an inner courtyard, and then into Beaumarchais.
“And her bike?”
“Her bike?”
“Yes, you said that she had a helmet, was it just for decoration?”
“No, she had a scooter, but she wanted to go on foot.” Because she’d parked it in front of the bar. And that was when I understood the reason behind this and the paranoia Ilona was showing. She kept looking behind her on the way. I had attributed her behavior to her eccentricity. All the Russian girls I’ve met in my work have been a bit eccentric. In fact, she had obviously wanted to avoid rue Amelot — and the people who were waiting there for her. “We walked for about thirty minutes, around Place de la République, up Faubourg du Temple as far as Saint-Maur, then turned right to get to Oberkampf and the restaurant. Café Charbon, know it?”
Sydney didn’t react but I felt Yves nodding on my right and heard him commenting on my lack of judgment, strolling around like that on a Saturday night in such a neighborhood with that kind of girl.
I heard a noise behind me — Ralph was back in the room: “No answer to the number you gave us, Valère.” His voice was first very close, controlled, then I had the impression that he was straightening up to talk to his boss. “I got our colleagues there. One guy speaks English so I asked him to check a couple of IDs. He’s going to call back.”
“Go on, Monsieur Henrion.”
“We ate, talked a little, there was a crowd. It wasn’t very good.”
“Still didn’t open the present?”
“No.”
“So, this Ilona girl wasn’t as bad as all that.”
“I did it for Yelena, because she was her best friend.” And perhaps a little for myself, I thought.
“Very nice of you.”
Ilona had insisted that we sit in the rear, near a big mirror. She sat down so she could have her back to the restaurant window. In order to see what was behind her without the risk of being recognized from the outside. During the meal, she’d called a number on her cell several times but no one answered. At every aborted call, she’d seemed more tense. As for me, I was learning a little more about her because she was lowering her guard. I was only guessing really, catching signs. I’d already heard other stories like this and had no trouble filling in the blanks.
Like Yelena, she had arrived in Paris around the age of fifteen, leaving behind a crappy life with no future in a ruined, corrupt country. Ready to do anything to have her place in the sun. A pretty kid like so many others. Unscrupulous agencies relying on older former models from the same background who had actually become pimps had dragged her from capital to capital. Never forgetting to pump as much bread as they could out of her. Agencies that didn’t hesitate to put her on lousy jobs once she’d started to age, which meant turning a lot less tricks.
Of course I suspected what Ilona was doing to pay the rent. I had one foot in the scene, and even if I wasn’t into those things myself, I knew them well. I’d cross paths with many girls of her type. For a while I’d thought that Yelena was working as a high-class whore too. She talked so little about her life at the time that in the end I didn’t trust her. She hadn’t understood my attitude, and our affair fell apart. By the time I realized that her discretion was only modesty and shame, she’d already gone elsewhere to work with others and start over. That was six years ago, just after my arrival in London. Since then we’d stayed in touch anyway, and this at least had given me the chance to apologize, to try and be a better friend.
It was probably because of that, because of an old, unresolved guilt, that I had agreed to do something for Ilona at the end of the meal.
“So really, she asked you to go to her place alone, and you said yes without hesitating, without asking for an explanation?”
“Of course I did!”
“And so?”
“I can’t remember what she told me anymore, I... I’m tired.”
“With all the junk you took?” Ralph didn’t want to be forgotten.
I couldn’t reply. No point trying to justify the coke, I’d taken it willingly, like an idiot. They’d made me swallow the rest by force. But my three interrogators didn’t seem ready to believe me.
“So you agreed, and...?”
“And I went out of the Charbon...” Into the Saturday-night zoo, a little nervous and not very uplifted by the local crowd. I’d known the Oberkampf neighborhood a few years earlier when it was trendier, sleeker, newly revitalized. Now it was like anyplace else again, with even more bars and restaurants.
The building where Ilona and her housemate had their apartment was located in a private, gated alley not far from the restaurant. What used to be called a cité (housing block) in the 11th, a kind of narrow alley where artisans had their workshops before. These had disappeared a long time ago, replaced by very expensive, slightly bohemian apartments for models, photographers, and artists of all kinds. Or by public housing. Social diversity in the making.
“There wasn’t much light in the courtyard and no one in sight.” I stood a moment outside, listening to the sounds of a party several floors up and watching people in the street on the other side of the gate. “I climbed up to the third floor, I found the entrance Ilona had mentioned on the landing, and I was going to knock when I heard the cry.” I had never been confronted with such suffering. A terrible scream, interrupted by deep gurgles and sobs. “It was a girl, I think. I thought it must be Ilona’s housemate, and I almost tried to enter, but...”
“But?” Sydney leaned toward me.
“Two men began talking to each other inside, in Russian. There were heavy punches, more moaning from someone in pain. Even through the... I... I could practically feel the punches.”