The Woman In The Fifth Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Woman in the Fifth

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The Woman

  in the Fifth

  'An extraordinary tour de force'

  Mail on Sunday

  'Kennedy captures the seedy stinginess of cheap hotels, the hint of menace in the metro, the Third World-ness of kebab shops and internet cafes around the Château d'Eau station . . . Kennedy's Paris is a roman noir melting pot'

  Irish Times

  'A claustrophobic atmosphere is layered with sleazy transactions and the emotional flaws of the characters. It's all neatly captured in Kennedy's sharp, shoot-from-the-hip prose'

  Independent on Sunday

  'I ended up missing my stop to finish it'

  Daily Telegraph

  'Douglas Kennedy is back with another of his intriguing, beautifully written page-turners'

  Elle

  'This elegant thriller keeps you guessing until the end'

  Eve

  About the Author

  Douglas Kennedy's novels – The Dead Heart, The Big Picture, The Job, The Pursuit of Happiness, A Special Relationship, State of the Union and Temptation – have all been highly praised bestsellers. He is also the author of three acclaimed travel books: Beyond the Pyramids, In God's Country and Chasing Mammon. His work has been translated into sixteen languages. In 2006 he received the French decoration of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Born in Manhattan in 1955, he lives in London with his wife and two children.

  Also by Douglas Kennedy

  Fiction

  Temptation

  State of the Union

  A Special Relationship

  The Pursuit of Happiness

  The Job

  The Big Picture

  The Dead Heart

  Non-fiction

  Chasing Mammon

  In God's Country

  Beyond the Pyramids

  The Woman

  in the Fifth

  DOUGLAS

  KENNEDY

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  ISBN 9781407009605

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  5 7 9 10 8 6 4

  Copyright © Douglas Kennedy 2007

  Douglas Kennedy has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs

  and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

  either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales

  is entirely coincidental

  This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  First published in the United Kingdom by Hutchinson in 2007

  Arrow Books

  The Random House Group Limited

  20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA

  www.rbooks.co.uk

  Addresses for companies within

  The Random House Group Limited can be found at:

  www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 9781407009605

  Version 1.0

  For Frank Kelcz

  'Everything she had told the Superintendent was true, but sometimes nothing is less true than the truth.'

  Georges Simenon, La Fuite de Monsieur Monde

  One

  THAT WAS THE year my life fell apart, and that was the year I moved to Paris.

  I arrived in the city a few days after Christmas. It was a wet, gray morning – the sky the color of dirty chalk; the rain a pervasive mist. My flight landed just after sunrise. I hadn't slept during all those hours above the Atlantic – another insomniac jag to add to all the other broken nights I'd been suffering recently. As I left the plane, my equilibrium went sideways – a moment of complete manic disorientation – and I stumbled badly when the cop in the passport booth asked me how long I'd be staying in France.

  'Not sure exactly,' I said, my mouth reacting before my brain.

  This made him look at me with care – as I had also spoken in French.

  'Not sure?' he asked.

  'Two weeks,' I said quickly.

  'You have a ticket back to America?'

  I nodded.

  'Show it to me, please,' he said.

  I handed over the ticket. He studied it, noting the return date was January 10.

  'How can you be "not sure",' he asked, 'when you have proof?'

  'I wasn't thinking,' I said, sounding sheepish.

  'Évidemment,' he said. His stamp landed on my passport. He pushed my documents back to me, saying nothing. Then he nodded for the next passenger in line to step forward. He was done with me.

  I headed off to baggage claim, cursing myself for raising official questions about my intentions in France. But I had been telling the truth. I didn't know how long I'd be staying here. And the airplane ticket – a last-minute buy on an Internet travel site, which offered cheap fares if you purchased a two-week round-trip deal – would be thrown out as soon as January 10 had passed me by. I wasn't planning to head back to the States for a very long time.

  'How can you be "not sure" when you have proof?'

  Since when does proof ever provide certainty?

  I collected my suitcase and resisted the temptation to splurge on a cab into Paris. My budget was too tight to justify the indulgence. So I took the train. Seven euros one-way. The train was dirty – the carriage floor dappled in trash, the seats sticky and smelling of last night's spilt beer. And the ride in to town passed through a series of grim industrial suburbs, all silhouetted by shoddy high-rise apartment buildings. I shut my eyes and nodded off, waking with a start when the train arrived at the Gare du Nord. Following the instructions emailed to me from the hotel, I changed platforms and entered the métro for a long journey to a station with the aromatic name of Jasmin.

  I emerged out of the métro into the dank morning. I wheeled my suitcase down a long narrow street. The rain turned emphatic. I kept my head down as I walked, veering left into the rue La Fontaine, then right into
the rue François Millet. The hotel – the Sélect – was on the opposite corner. The place had been recommended to me by a colleague at the small college where I used to teach – the only colleague at that college who would still speak to me. He said that the Sélect was clean, simple and cheap – and in a quiet residential area. What he didn't tell me was that the desk clerk on the morning of my arrival would be such an asshole.

  'Good morning,' I said. 'My name is Harry Ricks. I have a reservation for—'

  'Sept jours,' he said, glancing up from behind the computer on his desk. 'La chambre ne sera pas prête avant quinze heures.'

  He spoke this sentence quickly, and I didn't catch much of what he said.

  'Désolé, mais . . . euh . . . je n'ai pas compris . . .'

  'You come back at three p.m. for the check-in,' he said, still speaking French, but adopting a plodding, deliberate, loud voice, as if I was deaf.

  'But that's hours from now.'

  'Check-in is at three p.m.,' he said, pointing to a sign next to a mailbox mounted on the wall. All but two of the twenty-eight numbered slots in the box had keys in them.

  'Come on, you must have a room available now,' I said.

  He pointed to the sign again and said nothing.

  'Are you telling me there isn't one room ready at this moment?'

  'I am telling you that check-in is at three p.m.'

  'And I am telling you that I am exhausted, and would really appreciate it if—'

  'I do not make the rules. You leave your bag, you come back at three.'

  'Please. Be reasonable.'

  He just shrugged, the faintest flicker of a smile wandering across his lips. Then the phone rang. He answered it and used the opportunity to show me his back.

  'I think I'll find another hotel,' I said.

  He interrupted his call, turning over his shoulder to say, 'Then you forfeit tonight's room charge. We need twenty-four hours notice for cancelation.'

  Another faint smirk – and one which I wanted to rub off with my fist.

  'Where can I put my suitcase?' I asked.

  'Over there,' he said, pointing to a door by the reception desk.

  I wheeled over my suitcase and also took off the computer knapsack slung over my shoulder.

  'My laptop is in this bag,' I said. 'So please—'

  'It will be fine,' he said. 'À quinze heures, monsieur.'

  'Where am I supposed to go now?' I asked.

  'Aucune idée,' he said. Then he turned back to his call.

  At a few minutes past eight on a Sunday morning in late December, there was nowhere to go. I walked up and down the rue François Millet, looking for a café that was open. All were shuttered, many with signs:

  Fermeture pour Noël.

  The area was residential – old apartment buildings interspersed with some newer ones from the ugly school of seventies brutalism. Even the modern blocks looked expensive; the few cars parked on the street hinting that this corner of town was upscale and – at this time of the day – lifeless.

  The rain had quieted down into an insidious drizzle. I didn't have an umbrella, so I marched back up to the Jasmin métro station and bought a ticket. I got on the first train that arrived, not sure where I was heading. This was only my second trip to Paris. The last time I had been here was in the mid-eighties, the summer before I entered graduate school. I spent a week in a cheap hotel off the boulevard Saint-Michel, haunting the cinemas in that part of town. At the time, there was a little café called Le Reflet opposite a couple of backstreet movie houses on the rue . . . what the hell was its name? Never mind. The place was cheap and I seemed to remember that they were open for breakfast, so . . .

  A quick study of the métro map on the carriage wall, a change of trains at Michel-Ange Molitor, and twenty minutes later I emerged at Cluny-La Sorbonne. Though it had been more than twenty years since I'd last stepped out of this métro station, I never forget my way to a cinema – so I instinctually turned up the boulevard Saint-Michel and into the rue des Écoles. The sight of the marquee of Le Champo – advertising a De Sica and a Douglas Sirk festival on their two screens – provoked a small smile. When I reached its shuttered doors and peered up the rue Champollion – the name of the street I had forgotten – and saw two other cinemas lining its narrow wet pavement, I thought, Fear not, the old haunts still exist.

  But at nine in the morning, none of them were yet open, and Café Le Reflet was also shuttered. Fermeture pour Noël.

  I returned to the boulevard Saint-Michel and started walking towards the river. Paris after Christmas was truly dead. The only working places nearby were all the fast-food joints that now dotted the streets, their neon fronts blotting the architectural line of the boulevard. Though I was desperate for shelter from the rain, I still couldn't bring myself to spend my first hours in Paris huddled in a McDonald's. So I kept walking until I came to the first proper café that was open. It was called Le Départ, located on a quay fronting the Seine. Before reaching it, I passed in front of a nearby newspaper stand and scored a copy of Pariscope – the 'What's On' guide for the city and my cinephile bible back in 1985.

  The café was empty. I took a table by a window and ordered a pot of tea against the internal chill I felt coming on. Then I opened Pariscope and began combing the cinema listings, planning my viewing for the week ahead. As I noted the John Ford retrospective at the Action Écoles and all the Ealing comedies at Le Reflet Medicis I felt something that had been absent in my life for months: pleasure. A small, fleeting reminder of what it was like not to think about . . . well, everything that had so preoccupied me since . . .

  No, let's not go there. Not today, anyway.

  I pulled out a little notebook and my fountain pen. It was a lovely old red Parker, circa l925: a fortieth birthday gift, two years ago, from my ex-wife when she was still my wife. I uncapped the pen and starting scribbling down a schedule. It was a blueprint for the next six days that would give me space in the mornings to set up my life here, and spend all other available waking time in darkened rooms, staring up at projected shadows. 'What is it that people love most about a cinema? 'I used to ask my students in the introductory course I taught every autumn. 'Could it be that, paradoxically, it is a place outside of life in which imitations of life take place? As such, maybe it's a hiding place in which you cannot really hide because you're looking at the world you've sought to escape.'

  But even if we know we cannot really hide from things, we still try. Which is why some of us jump planes to Paris on forty-eight hours' notice, fleeing all the detritus we've left behind.

  I nursed the pot of tea for an hour, shaking my head when the waiter dropped by to ask if I wanted anything else. I poured out a final cup. The tea had gone cold. I knew I could have sat in the café for the rest of the morning without being hassled. But if I just continued to loiter without intent there, I would have felt like a deadbeat for hogging a table all that time . . . even though there was only one other customer in the café.

  I glanced out the window. The rain was still falling. I glanced at my watch. Five hours to go until check-in. There was only one solution. I reopened Pariscope and found that there was a big cinema complex over at Les Halles which started showing movies at nine every morning. I put away my notebook and pen. I grabbed my coat. I tossed four euros down on the table and headed out, making a quick dash for the métro. It was two stops to Les Halles. I followed the signs to something called 'Le Forum', a bleak concrete shopping center, sunk deep into the Paris earth. The cinema had fifteen screens and was like any American multiplex in some nowhere suburban mall. All the big US Christmas blockbusters were on show, so I chose a film by a French director whose work I didn't know. There was a screening in twenty minutes, which meant first sitting through a series of inane advertisements.