He came out again.
‘They’re Ted Lapidus jackets. High-class ready-to-wear. I imagine the customer at the end of the line pays about 5000 francs for one of those, and 10,000 for a coat. At those prices it’s really worthwhile sorting out a few schemes.’
The two inspectors walked back to passage de l’Industrie. Romero sat down in a quiet café to read the newspaper. Lavorel went up to the Berican workroom, rang the bell and waited one or two minutes. The sound level behind the door fell noticeably. The door opened slightly. Strong smell of leather. A colossal man appeared in the half-open doorway. Nearly six feet tall, broad-shouldered, stout yet not too much so. Dressed in black. Swarthy complexion, shaven head, huge grey moustache. Striking.
‘Monsieur Berican?’
‘Yes, I am. What do you want from me?’ Strong accent, fluent French.
‘I’m a journalist. I’m preparing a series of articles about the legalization of Turkish workers in the Sentier district. I’d like to interview a workroom boss and Berelovitch, the manufacturer I’ve met, told me you’d certainly agree to answer my questions.’
Warm smile. ‘Wait a moment.’
Berican turned towards the interior of the apartment, which was now more or less silent. A few sentences in Turkish, The sound of the machines and the conversations began again.
‘Let’s go and have a drink,’ Berican said to Lavorel. ‘But we mustn’t be long, I’ve got a lot of work to do.’
*
A café in rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis. A lot of men, swarthy and moustachioed. At the bar, more ouzo and raki than pastis. And cups of coffee. Very noisy conversations in totally strange languages. Groups standing round the pinball machines. You could hardly see through the cigarette smoke. Berican led Lavorel to a smoke-free table outside, it was a little easier to breathe there. Jovial type, Berican.
‘It’s my round, what will you have? One pastis. And a raki. What do you want to know?’
‘Do you think the Turks will win the right to work legally?’
‘For the last two or three days we’ve all begun to think so, yes.’
‘You employ clandestine workers. If they’re able to work legally that won’t help you. They’ll cost you more.’
Berican laughed. ‘It doesn’t happen like that. I was a clandestine worker once, like them. I fled Turkey in 1960. I worked here without papers for ten years. You can’t possibly know what that means. I shaved off my moustache and dyed my hair light brown. I regretted being tall, I travelled in buses, never in the Metro. And I always walked about with a camera dangling over my stomach. But whatever I did, I couldn’t manage to look like a German tourist. Every time I stepped into the street I felt afraid. It was a strange life, you know. It’s the life my workers lead today. I’ve given money to support their Committee. As soon as I can I’ll give work contracts to everyone.’
‘And will you pay the social security contributions?’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘I want very good workers, and I want Turks. I only trust Turks. They’ve been working with leather for centuries, they know about it. But there are no legal Turkish workers. Today, I pay my workers well, in cash … Tomorrow I’ll write out payslips, the wages will be a little lower, that’s all.’
‘And what about your manager, does he see things the same way as you do?’
‘My manager is a manageress. An old friend. I met her ten years or so ago. She does all the accounts for the workroom and most of the presentations for the manufacturers. She knows the Sentier as well as I do. I look after the quality of the work. She looks after the management.’
‘Do you think I could interview her?’
‘Not today. She’s never here on Saturdays.’
‘Could you describe her to me, so that I could write about her in my article, you know, to liven it up?’
He laughed.
‘She’s no longer all that young, a little over fifty, I believe. She’s well built and sturdy, but she also has style. I don’t know what else I can tell you. She looks reliable. I’m going back up to work. Do you want to look round the workroom?’
‘Yes, I’d like to.’
Berican got up and collected a tray with twenty cups of coffee from the bar, without paying. He had an account and all his workers could charge their coffees to it.
In the passage he turned to Lavoreclass="underline" ‘You see, passages like this with workrooms everywhere are rather like certain places in Istanbul. But in Istanbul there would be a little stall at the entrance kept by an old man who would make tea and coffee and take it up to the workrooms all day long. We miss that here.’
They climbed the stairs and pushed open the door to the apartment. The smell of leather again, almost suffocating. A lot of noise, machines, talk, radio. Intense activity. The boss called out: ‘Coffee’. All the machines stopped. The men went into the kitchen by the entrance to drink and chat. Berican introduced Lavorel, a journalist. Smiles, laughter. They were going to win. Ya hip Ya hop. Warm atmosphere.
A tour round the apartment. A very classic petit-bourgeois apartment. Three rooms along the side of the building, separated from the kitchen, bathroom and storeroom by a corridor. The principal rooms opened onto the passage. Nothing had been rearranged, just a thicket of cables hanging from the ceiling, and neon strip lighting in every room. In the first of these, the biggest, opposite the kitchen, was a huge cutting-out table equipped with four big, heavy and noisy sewing-machines. In the second room there were four long tables with rows of machines. In the third room, yet another table with machines and three small individual tables with lighter machines. The finishings, explained Berican, buttonholes, buttons, various accessories. And the labels. The labels are important for us: we work for the biggest names in the ready-to-wear business. As he goes along each worker marks on a sheet of paper the number of labels given to him and the number used. At the end of this room was the connecting door to the next apartment It seemed to be permanently sealed off with bolts but … In any case that doesn’t interest me and I haven’t got much information to work on, thought Lavorel. They went back along the corridor. The storeroom had been fitted out as a little office for the manageress with less than sparse furnishings: a metal desk, with drawers that locked, a few shelves, a big standard lamp and an armchair. On the desk, tidily arranged, were two notebooks and the plastic bag from FNAC, described by Romero, with the box inside it. Berican caught sight of it at the same time as Lavorel. He looked slightly annoyed. He took out his bunch of keys, picked up the bag and locked it up in one of the desk drawers. They went back into the corridor. Kitchen and bathroom, littered with leftover food, coffee pots, cups and glasses. The tour was over. Berican returned to his work with the cutters.
Lavorel said goodbye to everyone, pulled the door to behind him and joined Romero in his quiet café a little way up the street. They took stock.
‘Paulette and the woman we saw yesterday are probably one and the same person. The descriptions seem to tally. If there’s some dealing going on Paulette’s playing an important part in it. But what sort of dealing? I can’t answer that. The box in the FNAC bag is there, I know where it is but I don’t know what’s in it. I’d like to go round the place during the night. But what would the chief say?’
Romero laughed.
‘He’d say: “Don’t get caught.” Ask him all the same.’
After steak, chips and a beer they went to Villemomble. Saturday afternoon, an easy drive. Lavorel and Romero swapped childhood memories which were similar: from the Belle de Mai estate to the Courneuve. Romero drove, Lavorel studied the street plan … 44 rue Gallieni. First they would drive past it, then they would come back, look and think about what to do. Villemomble was rather petit-bourgeois, but rue Gallieni was definitely ritzy. No more bungalows, but solid houses of several storeys with terraces, verandas and real gardens behind high gates. No. 44 was a very attractive white house, late nineteenth-century, with a little tower, well protected by a high stone wall and a black-painted iron door. The interior of the property was hardly visible.