Sunday: Nick

Sunday

Nick

Second floor

Morning. I enter the building’s stairwell. I’ve been running for hours. I have no idea how long, actually, or how far I went. Miles, probably. Normally I’d have the exact stats, would be checking my Garmin obsessively, uploading it all to Strava the second I’d got back. This morning I can’t even be bothered to look. Just needed to clear my head. I only stopped because the agony in my calf began to cut through everything else—though for a while I almost enjoyed running through the pain. An old injury: I pushed a Silicon Valley quack to prescribe me oxycodone for it. Which also helped dull the sting when my investments started to go bad.

On the first floor I hesitate outside the apartment. I knock on the door once, twice—three times. Listen for the sound of footsteps inside while I take in the scuffed doorframe, the stink of stale cigarette smoke. I linger perhaps a couple of minutes but there’s no answer. He’s probably passed out in there in a drunken stupor. Or maybe he’s avoiding me . . . I wouldn’t be surprised. I have something I want—need—to say to the guy. But I suppose it’ll have to wait.

Then I close the door, start climbing the stairs, my eyes stinging. I lift the hem of my sweat-soaked T-shirt to rub at them, then carry on up.

I’m just passing by the third-floor apartment when the door is flung open and there she stands: Jess.

“Er—hi,” I say, pushing a hand through my hair.

“Oh,” she says, looking confused. “It looked like you were going upstairs?”

“No,” I say, “No . . . actually, I was coming to see how you were. I meant to say—sorry for running off yesterday. When we were talking. Did you have any luck tracking Ben down?”

I look at her closely. Her face is pale. No longer the sly little fox she seemed yesterday, now she’s a rabbit in the headlamps.

“Jess,” I say. “Are you all right?”

She opens her mouth but for a moment no sound comes out. I get the impression she’s fighting some sort of internal battle. Finally she blurts, “Someone was in here, very early this morning. Someone else must have a key to this apartment.”

“A key?”

“Yeah. They came in and crept around.” Less rabbit-in-the-headlamps now. That tough veneer coming back up.

“What, into the apartment? Did they take anything?”

She shrugs, hesitates. “No.”

“Look, Jess,” I say. “It sounds to me like you should speak to the police.”

She screws up her face. “I called them yesterday. They weren’t any help.”

“What did they say?”

“That they’d make a record,” she says with an eyeroll. “But then, I don’t know why I even bothered. I’m the fucking idiot who comes to Paris alone, barely able to speak the language. Why I thought they’d take me seriously . . .”

“How much French can you speak?” I ask her.

She shrugs. “Hardly anything. I can just about order a beer, but that’s it. Pretty bloody useless, right?”

“Look, why don’t I come with you to the Commissariat? I’m sure they’d be more helpful if I spoke to them in French.”

She raises her eyebrows. “That would be—well, that would be amazing. Thank you. I’m . . . look, I’m really grateful.” A shrug. “I’m not good at asking for favors.”

“You didn’t ask—I offered. I told you yesterday I want to help. I mean it.”

“Well, thanks.” She tugs at the chain of her necklace. “Can we go soon? I need to get out of this place.”