The Good Thief's Guide to Paris (2 page)

TWO

The night concierge reappeared just as we entered. He frowned, his hand suspended above a fire extinguisher that was mounted on the wall behind his desk.

“Bonsoir Monsieur,” I said breezily, treating him to a casual wave and a friendly bow, meanwhile taking Bruno by the arm and guiding him across the foyer. Bruno’s feet seemed to catch in one another. I glanced sideways at the concierge. He still hadn’t moved.

“Quatrième étage,” I managed, jabbing my finger towards the ceiling.

Finally, the concierge shrugged and murmured something under his breath, as though he couldn’t care less where we were heading.

“Bonsoir,” I added, pointlessly, and watched as he turned his back on us to heave the extinguisher from the wall and return to the alley.

At the far side of the foyer, Bruno pressed the call button for the elevator. I heard an antique-sounding chime and the whirring of hidden cogs and cables, followed by the muted ringing of the elevator bell as the single carriage descended towards us. From outside came the whoosh and squirt of extinguisher foam. There was a pause, followed by a second and then a third blast of the extinguisher, accompanied by one of the few French words I could recall from my school exchange.

The foyer itself was eerily quiet and the lighting subdued, as if to prepare us for sleep. The decor was stylish, though minimalist. Flecked marble tiles covered the floor beneath our feet and the off-white walls were hung with a handful of bold, modern canvases. Sure, the concierge might not have said anything, but he worked in a quality building and it was reasonable to assume he was suspicious about our arrival coinciding with the fire.

“This is taking too long,” I whispered to Bruno.

“There are stairs.”

“No – it’d look odd. I just wish the elevator would hurry up.”

Bruno checked the dial above our heads. “Two more floors.”

“Marvellous.”

I contemplated my feet, noting that my shoes could do with a clean. It was a job I’d meant to tackle before showing up for my book reading. Mind you, my tardiness hadn’t seemed to put anyone off. By the end of the evening, I’d sold more books than I’d anticipated and that happy state of affairs had a lot to do with how much wine I’d drunk afterwards, and the wine had a lot to do with why I’d agreed to show Bruno how to set about breaking into an apartment building. I guess if I was the type of chap to keep my shoes clean, I probably wouldn’t have got involved in such a hair-brained scheme in the first place. It’s amazing, really, how much trouble a good shoeshine can save.

If I’d had the time, I suppose I could have turned my mind to what other chores I might have better occupied myself with, but right then the elevator bell chimed twice more and the burnished metal doors jerked apart. We stepped inside the cramped elevator interior, the carriage bouncing with our weight, and turned around just as the concierge returned to his position behind the reception desk. I forced a smile and nodded, then glimpsed out of the corner of my eye that Bruno was reaching for the button with the number three printed on it.

“No,” I snapped, lashing out and compressing the button for the fourth floor before his finger made contact.

Bruno turned to me with a confused expression but I maintained my fixed smile as we waited for the doors to shuffle closed. As soon as they were sealed and the carriage had begun to rise, Bruno asked me, “Why did you do that?”

I rolled my eyes. “Because I told the concierge we wanted the fourth floor.”

“But the apartment is on the third.”

“I know, I screwed up. I think maybe I should have passed on that last glass of wine.”

Bruno shook his head in an exaggerated way, as though I’d just dinged his car on the Champs-Élysées.

“It’s not a big deal,” I said. “We’ll just get out on the fourth floor and take the stairs down a level.”

“We should maybe have used the stairs anyway.”

I sighed. “Look, nobody takes the stairs in a building like this when there’s a working elevator. And we don’t want to do anything out of the ordinary to draw the concierge’s attention.”

Bruno gave me a stern look.

“Granted, this evening may not be the best example of that. But you have to respect the theory.”

The elevator bell chimed, interrupting us, and then the carriage came to a sudden halt on floor four, tossing my stomach lightly upwards. The doors juddered open.

“Go ahead,” I said, and motioned for Bruno to step out.

Bruno moved into the corridor with all the stealth of a high-kicking showgirl at the Moulin Rouge, triggering a sensor that caused a series of lamps fitted along the corridor walls to light up. The walls themselves were painted a dusky red to around shoulder-height and a muted cream thereafter. Immediately opposite the elevator shaft was a rubber plant with large, glossy leaves, and a low banquette upholstered in tan leather. I stepped into the corridor behind Bruno and followed him beyond a pair of identical apartment doors that faced one another, towards a featureless cream door at the end of the corridor. A green fire-exit lamp with the words “Sortie de Secours” printed on it was glowing just above the doorway.

We passed through the door and found ourselves on a flight of concrete steps. The air was noticeably cooler away from the serviced part of the building and as we headed downstairs, our footsteps echoed against the breezeblock walls in a dull percussion. On entering the third-floor corridor, we triggered another set of lights. The corridor was decorated in the same manner as the floor above, save that the rubber plant had been replaced with an aluminium umbrella stand.

“I don’t see any security cameras,” I said.

“No,” Bruno agreed.

“None in the foyer either?”

“Only the concierge.”

“I’m surprised.”

“It is an old building.”

I sucked my lips. “Modern interior, though. And an expensive address. Seems unusual these days.”

“Perhaps in London.”

I shook my head. “You know, there are no cameras in my building, near Grenelle. But it’s still a lot more secure than this place.”

“Yes?”

“It’s one of the reasons I chose it. For the deterrent factor more than anything.”

Bruno gave me a sideways look. “So, to find a safe place to live, I should maybe see if a burglar lives there first.”

“Absolutely. But what are you going to do, keep an eye out for a guy wearing a striped jumper and an eye mask, carrying a bag marked ‘SWAG’?”

Bruno smiled crookedly and pointed towards a cream-coloured door numbered 3A. The door had a brass peephole at eye level and what looked like a regulation deadbolt a shade lower than my hip.

“Will this work?” he asked, opening his palm and showing me the rake.

“If we’re lucky, it might.” I closed his fingers around the tool. “But you’re getting ahead of yourself. You haven’t checked if the apartment is empty.”

Bruno looked puzzled. “Because I know it already.”

“Wrong,” I said, wagging my finger. “You think you know. But you don’t know one hundred per cent for certain. And if you want to do this like a pro, you knock first.”

Bruno cocked his shoulders. “It seems a little silly, no?”

“To you, maybe. Not to me.”

I pointed to the door. Bruno waved the rake in my face.

“You do not trust me?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

“Because I already paid you, remember?”

“That’s not the issue.”

Bruno shut one eye and peered at me with the other. It looked like a complicated gesture. Maybe it was something he practised at home in front of his mirror.

“The thing is,” I went on, “we only just met, agreed? And what you’ve asked me to do is pretty unusual. And sure, you’ve paid me and I’ve gone along with it, but I still don’t know you any more than you know that apartment is empty. And all I’m asking you to do is knock on the damn door and you’re being kind of funny about it.”

Bruno groaned and dropped his shoulders. He glanced at the back of his hands and shook his head. Then he rolled his eyes, balled his right hand into a solid-looking fist and knocked very deliberately on the centre of the door.

We waited.

“Knock again.”

Bruno’s eyes grew wide, but he did as I asked. I stepped forwards and pressed my ear against one of the bevelled door panels. I couldn’t hear a sound from inside. I nudged Bruno out of the way and put my eye to the brass peephole without success.

“I told you, it is empty,” Bruno said.

“Seems that way,” I agreed, backing away from the peephole.

“So?”

“So alright. Just pop the lock and we’re good. We really shouldn’t hang around out here too long, you know.”

I was yet to hear a Parisian utter the words “Sacrebleu” but I like to think I got close. Instead, Bruno grumbled to himself and crouched down to assess the lock, blocking my view with the back of his head. I watched as he inserted the rake into the locking cylinder and braced it against the pins as I had shown him. He slipped the screwdriver into position and exerted some lateral force. He took a breath, squared his shoulders and whipped the rake out.

And nothing happened.

Bruno grunted, reinserted the rake. He forced it up inside the lock a little harder, bending the handle a fraction. He withdrew the rake a second time, in a more deliberate manner.

“Too slow,” I commented.

Bruno’s shoulders tensed. He didn’t look at me but I could tell he was riled.

“You have to be faster. If you just visualise the pins in your mind and . . .”

“Yes,” he snapped. “I will do it.”

Bruno slipped the rake into the lock a third time and removed it without success. He tried a fourth time, and a fifth. After his sixth failure, he cussed and threw the rake onto the floor.

“Easy,” I said, resting a hand on his back. “That’s not such a simple lock. If it helps, you’re doing everything right. In all probability, the rake just isn’t up to the job.”

Bruno shrugged, much like a teenager who’d just been scolded.

“You want me to pick it? You’re welcome to try yourself, only it takes practice and maybe it’s best you watch me this first time.”

“Show me,” he muttered.

I moved towards the door, reached inside my jacket and withdrew an ordinary-looking spectacles case. I popped the case open and selected one of my more flexible picks and a screwdriver with a slightly larger blade than the one I had equipped Bruno with. Once I’d gathered the bent plastic rake from the floor where Bruno had discarded it and returned the rake to my spectacles case and my spectacles case to my jacket pocket, I knelt down on the floor and faced up to the lock. I eased the pick inside the locking cylinder, hung my tongue out of the side of my mouth and went to work.

And maybe three minutes later, I’d cracked the thing. The dead-bolt drew back with a reassuring clunk, like the boot mechanism on a German sports hatch, and I reached up and turned the door handle.

And right then I heard the
pip-pip-pip
of a burglar alarm priming itself.

“Damn,” I said, as Bruno brushed past me. “You didn’t tell me there was an alarm.”

“Maybe you should have checked first,” he called over his shoulder, flicking on a light switch and hurrying towards the source of the noise. A collection of recessed downlighters illuminated the hallway, the hundred-watt glare rebounding from the parquet floor. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me, then focused my attention on the end of the hallway where Bruno was opening a floor-to-ceiling storage cupboard. He fumbled for a light cord hanging by his shoulder and flipped down the hinged plastic panel on the front of an alarm control box.

From my count, he had maybe eight seconds left to enter the code before the alarm would really begin to sound. I’d had that happen to me once or twice in the past and it was never something I chose to ignore. I mean, even supposing you can disable an alarm once it’s wailing flat-out, why would you want to? The thing has done its job by then and alerted everybody in the vicinity. At least, that’s what I’ve heard – I’ve never hung around long enough to find out.

Naturally, if I’d known about the alarm, I could have bypassed it. And in the normal sequence of events, I’d have checked the door for signs of an alarm before I got busy with my picks. But it was too late for that now. I’d blundered on in, caught up in Bruno’s frustration and the sticky trap set by my own ego. And yes, the booze too. How many had I had? Three, perhaps even four glasses of that heavy Bordeaux? Too many to drive a car legally, but apparently few enough to feel just tickety-boo about a little impromptu breaking and entering. And that was the nub of what was troubling me – just how foolish I’d been.

As I watched, Bruno tapped the code into the alarm panel, interrupting the ongoing
pips
with four lower notes registered in quick succession. There followed a longer
peep
and after that, silence.

Bruno turned to me.

“What was that, a test?”

He blinked and shook his head. “I forgot. That is all.”

I nodded, trying not to let it bother me. “Are you going to invite me in?”

Bruno directed me through an archway at the end of the hall, into an open-plan living room with an expensive-looking kitchen-dinette at one end. He twisted a dimmer switch and I found myself confronted by a sight I hadn’t expected. There was hardly any furniture – only a wide expanse of bare, concrete floor, encrusted with paint. The paint was all different kinds of colours, a random spectrum, like a giant Jackson Pollock installation. Leaning against the walls around the edge of the room were countless canvases and works in progress, most of them abstracts, with one or two more traditional portrait pieces. Over towards the full-length windows at the front of the apartment were a pair of easels with canvases clipped to them, and between the easels I saw what looked like a wallpaper pasting table, sagging under the weight of the paint tubes and brushes and trowels and cleaning fluids that had been stacked upon it.

Being a perceptive chap, I turned to Bruno and asked, “You paint?”

“A little,” Bruno said, with a curt nod.