Personal

It took her an hour to find me. She came with the silver-haired guy in the good suit, who seemed to be a known quantity in those parts. All the cops in the place leapt to attention. A minute later I had my stuff back in my pockets, and a minute after that we were out on the sidewalk. I was free and clear. Such was the power of O’Day. Scarangello got in the back of the same black Citroën she had used from Le Bourget, and I climbed in after her, and the guy in the suit stayed on the sidewalk and closed the door on us, and he called out to the driver in French and said, ‘Take them straight to the airport.’ The car took off fast and I craned around and saw the guy watch us go for a second, and then duck back inside the station house.

Scarangello said, ‘Why did you run?’

I said, ‘I didn’t run. I don’t like running. I walked.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m here as your cop. I was looking for the guy. That’s what cops do.’

‘You were nowhere near. You were in the wrong neighbourhood entirely.’

‘I figured he hadn’t stuck around.’

‘You were wrong.’

‘So what happened?’

‘They got him. And his rifle.’

‘They got him?’

‘He waited right there.’

‘Which one was it?’

‘None of them. It was a Vietnamese kid about twenty years of age.’

‘And what was the rifle?’

‘An AK-47.’

‘That’s bullshit.’

She said, ‘In your opinion.’

I started to say something, but she held up her hand. She said, ‘Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want the raw data. There could be subpoenas flying around by tomorrow. Safer for me not to know. I’m going to wait for the official statement.’

I said, ‘I was going to ask if you mind if we take a little detour.’

‘The plane is waiting.’

‘It can’t leave without us.’

‘Where do you want to go?’

I leaned forward and said to the driver in French, ‘Head for the Bastille and turn right.’

The guy thought for a second and said, ‘On Roquette?’

‘All the way to the end,’ I said. ‘Then wait at the gate.’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

Scarangello turned to quiz me again, but her focus fell short, on the shoulder of my jacket. The red and grey slick, now dark brown and purple, and on closer examination flecked with fine shards of white bone. She said, ‘What’s that?’

I said, ‘Just a guy I used to know.’

‘That’s disgusting.’

‘It’s raw data.’

‘You need a new jacket.’

‘This is a new jacket.’

‘You have to get rid of it. We’ll go buy you another one. Right now.’

‘The plane is waiting.’

‘How long can it take?’

‘This is France,’ I said. ‘Nothing in the stores is going to fit me.’

She said, ‘Where are we going?’

‘Something I want to do before we leave.’

‘What?’

‘I want to take a walk.’

‘Where?’

‘You’ll see.’

We crossed the Seine on the Pont d’Austerlitz, and hooked a left on the Boulevard de la Bastille, and headed up towards the monument itself, fast and fluent through the traffic, as if the driver was using lights and siren, although he wasn’t. The monument was the hub of a crazy traffic circle, called the Place de la Bastille, just as bad as all the others in Paris, and the fourth of its ten exits was the rue de la Roquette, which led basically east, straight to the cemetery gate.

‘Père Lachaise,’ Scarangello said. ‘Chopin is buried here. And Molière.’

‘And Edith Piaf and Jim Morrison,’ I said. ‘From the Doors.’

‘We don’t have time for tourism.’

‘Won’t take long,’ I said.

The driver parked at the gate and I got out. Scarangello came with me. There was a wooden booth that sold maps to all the famous graves. Like Hollywood, with the stars’ homes. We walked in, on a wide gritty path, and turned left and right past elaborate mausoleums and white marble headstones. I navigated by memory, from a sullen grey winter morning many years previously. I walked slow, pausing occasionally, checking, until I found the right place, which was now a strip of lawn, green with new spring grass, studded with headstones, broad and low. I found the right one. It was pale, and barely weathered at all, with two lines of inscription still crisp and precise: Joséphine Moutier Reacher, 1930–1990

. A life, sixty years long. I had arrived exactly halfway through it. I stood there, hands by my side, with another man’s blood and brains on my jacket.

‘Family?’ Scarangello asked.

‘My mother,’ I said.

‘Why is she buried here?’

‘Born in Paris, died in Paris.’

‘Is that how you know the city so well?’

I nodded. ‘We came here from time to time. And then she lived here after my father died. On the Avenue Rapp. The other side of Les Invalides. I visited when I could.’

Scarangello nodded and went quiet for a spell, maybe out of respect. She stood next to me, shoulder to shoulder. She asked, ‘What was she like?’

I said, ‘Petite, dark-haired but blue-eyed, very feminine, very obstinate. But generally happy. She made the best of things. She would walk into some dumpy Marine quarters somewhere and laugh and smile and say, ’Ome sweet ’ome. She couldn’t say the letter H because of her accent.’

Scarangello said, ‘Sixty is not very old. I’m sorry.’

‘We get what we get,’ I said. ‘She didn’t complain.’

‘What was it?’