The Good Thief's Guide to Paris (14 page)

“No,” he said, sounding scandalised.

“Listen, it’s going to happen. So either you can tell me where it is and save us both a lot of trouble or I can search until I find it. But I’m not leaving without the money.”

“I do not have it.”

“You’re lying.”

“It’s the truth.”

I sighed and got up from my chair. I stood with my hands on my hips and scanned the room. There were no obvious cubby-holes and certainly no safe. The pile of clothes I’d upended on the floor caught my eye and I crossed to them and went through all the pockets I could find. The bundle of notes was in the back pocket of the third pair of trousers I tried. I raised my eyebrows and gave Bruno a weary look.

“Surprise,” I said.

He closed his eyes and shook his head, cursing his misfortune. I pocketed the money and made a clucking noise with my tongue.

“You leave me in something of a dilemma here, Bruno. I want to release you from those handcuffs, I really do, but how can I trust you now? I mean, what’s to say you won’t try and get this money back from me in an unpleasant way?” I scratched my head. “On the other hand, I might need your help and you won’t be much use to me stuck here. So I wonder, what should I do?”

Bruno didn’t respond. I guess he knew there was nothing he could say. It was all down to me now – down to how compassionate I was feeling. I have to say the cooling body in my apartment was making me feel less sorry for the guy that I might normally.

“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll undo one hand and we’ll see how you behave. If you keep hold of that railing, I’ll be more inclined to trust you.”

I met Bruno’s eyes and held them, making sure he understood that I was serious. Then, when I felt he was ready to do as I said, I fished the handcuff keys out from my pocket and approached the edge of the bed. I checked once more on his position, making sure he wasn’t about to try to kick me again or even bite me for that matter, then I flexed my arms, focused on the handcuff around his right wrist and inserted the tiny key into the lock.

“Stay still,” I reminded him.

Bruno gripped hard on the railing, as if to prove that I could trust him. Very carefully, I turned the key. The handcuff popped open and I let it hang against Bruno’s wrist. I stepped backwards, away from the bed, and looked down over him.

“Very good,” I told him. “I’m impressed. Now, the bad news.”

As Bruno watched, I pocketed the keys, then removed my spectacles case and pulled out the smallest rake I carried.

“You remember what one of these is, right? Well, if you’re calm about it and you take your time, you’ll be able to pop the lock on that second handcuff no trouble at all. But remember Catherine’s apartment, okay? If you rush it, if you hurry to get after me, it won’t work. I’m not going to hand you the keys; that would be too easy. But I will give you this rake, just so long as you keep your right hand where it is until I’m out of this room. Agreed?”

Bruno glared at me, real loathing in his eyes. His fingers gripped and regripped the railing, knuckles whitening.

“Hey, relax,” I told him. “It’ll work. Just don’t drop it, that’s all. And make sure you go to the bank as normal tomorrow. I’ll be in touch and you’ll get your money back. Okay?”

I stepped forwards and carefully placed the rake on Bruno’s chest, keeping a watchful eye on his movements.

“I’m going to leave now,” I said. “And hey, keep your chin up, protégé. Think of this as a free tutorial.”

SEVENTEEN

My next move was a complete gamble and, to be honest, I was far from sure about it.

Let me tell you, I have a curious relationship with uncertainty. The writer in me fights it. I like to move my characters around in the scenes I devise for them, having them say what I need them to say and do what I need them to do. Sometimes, they’ll surprise me and sure, when that happens it can be a good thing. The book I’m writing heads off in a direction I hadn’t anticipated and I’m forced to think in new ways, hopefully keeping the story fresh. But I still need an overall scheme of who is going to wind up dead, who is going to be my killer and just how exactly Faulks is going to get away with the girl and the goods. I can handle some unknowns, a few grey areas for my characters to float around in, but I can’t allow the big picture to become confused.

My thieving is different. Yes, I take a methodical approach to every break-in I commit, but I never know for sure what I’m going to find on the other side of any door I might choose to open. And, confession time, I kind of like it. What’s the point in breaking some rules and, okay, some laws, if you don’t get a buzz out of it? Some of the best moments of my life have been spent in other people’s homes, uncovering things I hadn’t expected to find. Believe me, it’s a wonderful feeling plunging your hand into a sock drawer and coming up with a fistful of jewels. The downside is there’s no overall scheme. I have a plan, and sometimes my plan might be detailed, but I’m not the one calling the shots. Anything can happen. I might blunder in on an ex-wrestler with a torture dungeon in his basement or a woman with a can of mace and a speed-dial connection to the local vigilante association. I can’t control what the outcome of my thieving might be and the reality is it’s just a small step from getting a thrill out of the unknown to receiving a sizeable prison term.

Factor in a dead woman, especially a dead woman who happens to be decomposing in your apartment, and the stakes just get higher. And here I was, long after four in the morning, facing up to the prospect of breaking back into that dead woman’s home, without any idea if her body had been found just yet and, if it had, whether the authorities had sent anyone to watch her place.

It didn’t look as if Catherine’s building was under surveillance. There were no police cars parked in front of the lighted entrance and no plain-clothed detectives taking statements from the night concierge. Neither were there any signs of life in Catherine’s apartment. The picture window at the front of her living room was in darkness and the curtains still hadn’t been drawn.

The irony of being stood outside her apartment and planning to break in for a third time was not lost on me. Never return to the scene of the crime, right? Well, I very much doubt the originator of that piece of advice could have conceived of a burglar who would be dumb enough to ignore him not once, but twice.

At least there was one thing going in my favour – I still had the hotel room booked in my name and, by happy coincidence, I didn’t even have to check out until noon. Yes, the front door to the hotel was locked and the handwritten French-English sign in the glass panel informed me that guests returning after midnight should ring the bell, but I couldn’t see the sense in waking someone when I didn’t need to. And I certainly didn’t like the idea of drawing attention to myself just hours before a murder investigation might take hold of the building next door.

Pressing my face against the glass, I cupped my hands around my eyes to block out the glare from the street lamp over my shoulder. The hotel foyer looked deserted. It still looked that way when I was walking through it just a few minutes later, with my gloves on my hands and my pick and my micro screwdriver gripped in my jacket pocket. I stepped behind the reception desk and removed my room key from its numbered peg, for appearance’s sake if nothing else, and then I crossed to the stairs and began climbing. If anyone challenged me, I would say that the front door had been unlocked when I tried the handle but I seriously doubted I’d need an excuse. The place was so quiet I could have heard a pin drop, if only there’d been somebody nearby to drop a pin in the first place.

I didn’t visit my room, preferring to head straight for the roof. Once there, I glanced briefly at the yellow lighted windows I could see spread out across the city, drawing my eye towards the twinkling apex of the Eiffel Tower. Soon it would be five o’clock, and the tower would break into its hourly light display. Not many people would see it, I didn’t think. Perhaps some clubbers staggering home from a late-night bar, or one or two of the homeless people who sheltered together in clusters of brightly coloured tents beside the River Seine. Hell, maybe even the odd burglar scaling a mansard roof somewhere else in the Marais.

Returning my focus to the task at hand, I popped my torch into my mouth and picked my way through the padlock on the rooftop door to the apartment building, then tiptoed down the concrete internal stairs. This time I didn’t have a suitcase with me and I was concentrating pretty hard, so I had no trouble negotiating my way to the correct floor. My only real obstacle came when I readied myself to open the door to the corridor I was interested in. I couldn’t hear anything, but I was still concerned that the area might be crawling with police. As it turned out, when the sensor light blinked on the corridor wasn’t crawling with anything, except maybe carpet mites, and the relief I felt was enormous.

There was nothing to suggest that anyone was inside Catherine’s apartment, and when I carefully tried the door handle I found it was locked in the same way I’d left it. An instant later my picks came into play once again, my tongue did its hanging-out-of-my-mouth routine and my two arthritic knuckles thanked me profusely for not involving them in my latest criminal escapade. Soon after, I was stepping across the darkened threshold and dashing for the alarm control panel in an attempt to cancel the arming blips before the occupants of the apartment across the way began to wonder what their neighbour was doing coming home at such an unusual time of the morning.

Once the alarm was silenced, I dropped my shoulders and released the breath I’d been holding onto. Then I spread my hands in my gloves and listened to the sound of the plastic crinkling. My eyes were becoming used to the darkness of the living room ahead of me and I was acutely aware of the murmurs the apartment was emitting – the noise of the fridge-freezer, the kitchen radio on standby, the hot water settling in the pipes – all of it registering as a background whirr in my ears, much like my laptop when I’m writing.

There were a pair of thin, gauzy curtains either side of the picture window at the front of the living room and even though they wouldn’t block out much light, I drew them before turning on the main bulb. It seemed as though nothing had altered from my previous visit. There were the same paintings around the edge of the room and the same artist equipment was still scattered across the pasting table positioned between the two easels. I moved into the bedroom and found that nothing had changed there either. I closed the slatted blinds and turned on one of the bedside lamps. It must have been wired into the picture lamp up on the wall because that came on too, as if demanding that I acknowledge the spot where the painting of Montmartre used to hang.

I tightened my left hand into a fist, cracking my knuckles, and took a moment to compose my thoughts. I’d allow myself an hour. If I hadn’t found anything by then, it was unlikely I’d ever find what I was looking for. Plus, I could be on my way before six, which would minimise my chances of bumping into any of the building’s other residents when I left.

My self-imposed time limit gave me focus but it also made me acutely aware of the odds that were stacked against me. I was looking for something that might not be in the apartment in the first place and even if it was there, it could be hidden just about anywhere. An hour might sound like ample time but, let me tell you, when you’re hunting in a methodical way, trying not to leave any signs of your presence, and all the while you’re aware the police might show up at any moment, it’s really not long at all.

Only eighteen months before, I’d found myself facing up to a similar task, searching a series of locations for three monkey figurines. Tough as that had been, I would have happily swapped assignments now because although they were small, the figurines were easier to find than what I was currently searching for. I’d also had a heads-up as to where two of figurines should have been located, but I had no such luck here. I was going to have to rely on my instincts and I was beginning to feel the pressure.

One fruitless hour later, after checking every single room and item of furniture and crevice I could think of, I broke my most sacred rule and gave myself an extra ten minutes. And boy, was I glad I did. Because as soon as I’d shaken off my frustration and my growing sense of doom and looked at the scene in front of me afresh, I locked onto something I’d been dumb enough to pass over the first time and knew right away it was where the item I was looking for had to be stashed. It was, and I allowed myself a moment to smile and shake my head at my own thick-headedness before reaching for the accordion folder of documents below Catherine’s dressing table and removing the driving licence I’d found during my previous visit. Then I made like a peculiarly neat whirlwind and ensured that everything was back as it should have been before arming the alarm for what I sincerely hoped was the very last time and locking the front door to the apartment behind me with my picks.

I retraced my route to the roof, where I found that a dim, grey morning light had begun to form, and then I headed back down through the hotel. As I reached the second floor, I paused, debating whether to let myself into my room to snatch a few hours’ sleep. In the end, I did go inside, but only to collect my empty suitcase from the wardrobe. It turned out to be a smart move because when I got downstairs I discovered that Quasimodo was just beginning his shift and I was able to return my key to him and heft my suitcase in a cheerless way, like a traveller doomed to an early-morning flight. Afterwards, I made my way to the nearest métro station, where I boarded a carriage with the first commuters of the day and did my very best to look like yet another respectable member of society.

EIGHTEEN

The bank was full of smoke. Alarms rang out in a piercing wail and sprinklers scattered water from the ceiling. Faulks was drenched to the skin, his clothes clinging to his body like webbing. He glanced up, letting the water flush the sting of the smoke from his eyes. Towards the front of the building, he could just see the glow of the green emergency exit lamps. Staff and security guards were fleeing, their heads bowed and their eyes screwed tight against the smoke and water. Faulks let them go, moving with determination towards the rear of the bank.

The secure area was deserted. Faulks turned and threw two more smoke bombs into the atrium behind him. Then he faced up to the steel gate and entered the override code he’d obtained from his hack into the computer system. Beyond the gate were four vaults. He moved immediately to the second one, inserted the master key and input the combination. The door dropped on its hinges and Faulks heaved on the outside lever until the mighty thing swung open and he was able to step inside.

Powerful overhead lights flicked on, illuminating the vault. Faulks saw bag after bag of cash
–
many millions of American dollars. There was too much for him to carry but he unzipped his canvas holdall and began to fill it as best he could. He had two bags stashed when he heard the high-pitched whine above the noise of the fire alarm system for the first time. The noise was plaintive-sounding, as if the vault regretted what it was about to do. Faulks realised too late: there was a back-up he hadn’t thought of. The door began to swing inwards, gathering speed, and then it slammed closed with a definitive thud. Faulks swore. The vault was airtight. He got up from his crouched position and began to search for an internal safety catch. He couldn’t find one. Chances were there wasn’t one to find. Best guess, he had maybe twenty minutes before his air ran out.

Faulks banged on the door. He struck hard with his open palm, then drummed his fists. His movements became frantic and his banging louder, more insistent. It grew louder still and then there was a woman’s voice from the other side of the door. “Charlie,” the woman was saying. “Charlie . . .”

I looked up from my laptop, frowning. I blinked at the wall on the opposite side of my room, trying to pull myself out of the scene I’d been creating and make sense of what my fingers had just typed. I knew I was drowsy but something felt odd. Then I came round, and realised the banging was somebody knocking on the door to my hotel room.

“Charlie,” Victoria said again. “It’s me. Are you in there?”

Shakily, I got to my feet and crossed the room, rubbing my eyes with the heels of my palms. I had no need to put on a robe – I was still wearing the same clothes I’d had on the previous day. Originally, I’d planned to sleep when I got back from Catherine Ames’ apartment, but I’d found I was too strung-out to relax, so I’d picked up my laptop and started writing instead. The scene in the bank had been surprisingly vivid in my mind, possibly because I was so tired that I’d been writing in an almost trance-like way, and in truth I was a little annoyed to be interrupted.

I yawned as I opened the door, fully prepared to ask Victoria to come back later. I didn’t get the chance. She brushed past me into my room, heading straight for the television set.

“Thank God you’re here,” she said. “Have you seen the news?”

“What time is it?” I asked, stretching my arms above my head and rising up onto the balls of my feet.

“Around eight,” Victoria replied, in a distracted way. She was pointing the television remote at the screen, thumbing the buttons.

“I haven’t been back long then.” I yawned again. “What’s going on?”

A television image appeared, ballooning out from the centre of the screen, and Victoria pointed at some grainy footage of a ferry blockade.

“It’s after this.”

“What is?”

Victoria gave me an anxious look. “In a minute,” she said.

A minute later, I was staring at myself. No, that’s not quite true – I was staring at my author image, the one of the catalogue model in the dinner jacket. I heard my real name, though, and then I saw footage of the outside of my apartment building. The main entrance was sealed off with yellow crime scene tape and it was guarded by two uniformed officers with their hands behind their backs.

“What’s being said?” I asked Victoria, aware that her French was a good deal better than mine.

“They found the body. They’re looking for you in connection with it.”

She turned to me and there was concern in her eyes.

“Anything else?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even.

“It’s just a quick report. That banner down the bottom of the screen says ‘Latest News’.”

I watched as the banner disappeared and the newscast cut back to a female presenter with a sombre expression. Victoria killed the sound.

“So what now?”

I shrugged and yanked on the cotton material of the T-shirt I was wearing. “I guess I’d better not wear my tux today.”

“Seriously. Don’t you think you should hand yourself in?”

I ran my hand over my face. “Not at this rate,” I mumbled. “They’d only think I was an impostor.”

Victoria shook her head and sighed dramatically. She placed a hand on her hip, above the waistline of the dark blue jeans she had on. “Charlie, be sensible. It’s not going to take them long to find out that isn’t how you really look.”

“You think? I’m not sure I left any photos in my apartment.”

“Wake up. They only need to speak to your neighbours or the concierge at your building. Once one or two of them start saying it’s not you, they’ll know something’s wrong.”

“Oh. I guess.” I covered my mouth with my hand, but the yawn I’d been anticipating failed to materialise. “Or maybe they’ll think the guy who’s been living in the apartment is someone completely different. Maybe they’ll think he’s assumed my identity.”

Victoria looked at me as if I was mad.

“Could happen.”

She exhaled and dropped her shoulders. “So you’re not going to talk to them?”

“Are you kidding? To even try and clear my name I’d probably have to confess to breaking into Catherine’s apartment, and where does that leave me? All I can give them at the moment is Bruno’s name and I can’t see that going very far.”

“Did you find him last night?”

I nodded, then gestured for Victoria to sit down on the bed. I crossed my arms and rested my backside against a wooden cabinet. After a moment’s thought, I reached into the mini-fridge to my side and removed a bottle of Perrier. I broke the seal on the lid and felt a puff of carbon dioxide against my fingers. I offered the bottle to Victoria but she declined and so I took a mouthful of the chill, fizzy water and swallowed it down before continuing.

“I’m pretty sure he isn’t the killer,” I told her, wiping my lips with the back of my hand. “He didn’t seem to know Catherine was dead and I happened to believe him.”

She turned up her nose. It wasn’t a bad nose, as it happened. “Why?”

“Just a hunch.”

Victoria gave me a withering look.

“Sorry,” I said, and took another mouthful of water. “The truth is he was at work when she must have been killed. At least, I think he was.”

“You think?”

“I only have his word for it. He says he was at the bank all day. Apart from his lunch hour.”

“Well, there you go then.”

“He met Paige.”

I gave Victoria a helpless smile. She raised her fingertips to her temple and circled them, as if trying to ease a headache.

“Wait just a minute. Are you talking about the girl from the bookshop?”

“The one and same.”

“Well that’s a bit convenient, don’t you think?”

I waited. I could almost see the thoughts turning over in Victoria’s mind.

“Hang on, didn’t you tell me she had no idea who Bruno was?”

“I did.”

“But –”

“But she was there last night – when I got to Bruno’s place. They’re an item, apparently.”

“Oh,” she said, her lips still forming the shape of the word long after she’d finished pronouncing it. “I thought maybe you and her were . . .”

I wagged my finger. “Truth is, she’s a little too wild for me.”

“Wild?”

“She had Bruno all tied up. Kinky stuff. He was handcuffed to his bed, which is how come I was able to make him talk.”

“She had him handcuffed?
And
she’s his alibi?”

I set the Perrier down and held up a hand. “Listen, I think I know where you’re going with this.”

“Well, duh, it’s pretty obvious. Catherine’s wrists were tied to the back of a chair when she was suffocated. Bruno and Paige are into restraints. Same thing.”

“Catherine wasn’t naked and smeared in baby oil, though.”

Victoria screwed up her face. “Oh come on, Charlie. What more do you want?”

I got up from the cabinet I was resting against and crossed to the window. “Motive, opportunity, maybe just the vaguest shred of proof.”

“Humph.”

“Now that’s insightful.”

Victoria scowled at me and crossed her arms in front of her chest. I took a moment to pull back the net curtain in my window and peer out over the side alley that ran beneath my room. There was nobody loitering suspiciously, not even a cat. All I could see was the gutter pipe of the building opposite and a moped that had been crudely chained to its base.

Victoria took a deep, audible breath and I turned around to catch sight of her shoulders jerking upwards. The collar of the plaid blouse she was wearing grazed the underside of her chin. She looked at me sideways and I caught a glimmer in her eye.

“What if I could give you a time of death?”

“That would be wonderful. But I don’t happen to have my autopsy table with me. Or the body.”

Victoria shook her head impatiently. “Pass me your laptop.”

I returned to the cabinet I’d been resting against and handed the laptop to her, then watched as she smoothed her fingers over the track pad and clicked on an icon.

“What are you doing?”

“The message you were left,” she said, distractedly. “It was typed as a new document in your word processor. Well, document properties should tell us when the document was created, so . . . bingo!”

“Go on.”

“New Document 1 was first saved at 14.13 yesterday afternoon.”

“Bloody hell.”

“Impressed?”

“I am,” I said, snatching the laptop from Victoria’s hands and reading the information for myself. “I think my investigative skills have just been taken to an unprecedented level.”

She grinned. “So that’s lunchtime, give or take a half-hour. And it doesn’t stop there, Charlie. I also have some ideas about the documents you found in the back of the painting. Hey, are you listening to me?”

“Sorry,” I said, glancing up from the computer screen. “I was just thinking – maybe I’ve been a bit dim with this laptop. It could have the killer’s fingerprints on it.”

“Have you touched the keys?”

“Only a few billion times. But if you mean have I touched them since I found the message, I’m afraid the answer’s yes.”

“There still might be fingerprints, I suppose.”

“I’m no expert, but I guess it would be hard to pull a distinct print off the keys when they’re so smeared with my own finger marks.”

Victoria winced, as though conceding the point. “You know what, the killer probably wore gloves anyway. But it is a possibility, no matter how slight. So I really think you should close the laptop and not use it for a while. And listen to my other brainwave.”

I met her eyes, and set the laptop down to my side. “If you’re telling me not to write for a few days, this must be good.”

“Well,” she said, “you know the piece of paper with the six-digit codes written on it? I was thinking, they look like bank sort-codes to me.”

Victoria gave me an eager smile, as though she’d just solved a particularly difficult anagram. I chewed on my bottom lip.

“You think?”

“Absolutely.”

I rolled my lip between my teeth, squeezing the blood from it. “But do French banks even use sort-codes?”

A flash of doubt passed across Victoria’s face. “I assume so.”

I wrinkled my nose, unconvinced. “Listen, don’t get me wrong,” I said. “It could be you’re onto something. But then again, the French might use a different coding system altogether.”

“It’s something to consider, though, right?”

“Sure. But where does it get us? If they are sort-codes, does that mean the plans relate to a bank job?”

“Makes sense to me.”

“Does it? I think it might be the craziest thing I ever heard.”

Victoria frowned.

“Not crazy on its own terms,” I said, showing her my palms. “But you have to admit – it’s stretching credibility a bit far. I mean, here I am working on a book about a bank heist and I just happen to get caught up in one in real life? It’s kind of far-fetched.”

“Not impossible, though.”

“It would have to be the mother of all coincidences.”

“But banks
are
linked into this thing, Charlie. Bruno works in one, for starters.”

I nodded and pressed my fingertips together, wondering whether to say anything more.

“What?”

“You don’t know the half of it,” I told her. “The reason Bruno knew Catherine was because he works as a guard at her bank branch. She kept some valuables in the bank’s vault.”

“Well, there you go.”

“I don’t know, Vic.”

“Come on. It’s logical. It might be outlandish, given the circumstances, but banks are all over this thing.”

“Meaning, what? Catherine was the mastermind behind a series of planned bank heists at the exact same banks that those sort-codes relate to, assuming they even are sort-codes?”

“Perhaps.”

“And the blueprints and the electrical circuits and the photographs are the extent of this great master plan to rob six banks in the centre of Paris? And Pierre’s client knows all about it, which is how come I was hired, and at least one other person knows about it, possibly Bruno and Paige, which is why they killed Catherine in my apartment and left me the message about the painting? Which doesn’t make any sense, by the way, because it was Bruno himself who sold the painting to the gallery.”