The Third Woman

For almost sixty years Furst was one of the great document forgers. A gifted painter from childhood, he was faking masterpieces for wealthy clients by the time he was twenty. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he turned his talents to a more practical purpose, forging documents to help Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. Later, he joined the Resistance, creating papers for SOE agents dropped into France between 1942 and 1943, before his eventual capture. He survived for two years at Auschwitz. After the war, he developed the trade in forged documents for profit, protected by the legitimate screen of the family garment business.

He retired from his art – art being exactly what he considers it – in 1995 when the arthritis in his fingers began to affect the quality of his work. Over the years, Furst passed on his expertise to a small handful of apprentices. One of them was an Irish art student who was studying in Paris during the 1960s. His name was Cyril Bradfield.

Cyril has been creating independent identities for me as long as I’ve been Petra Reuter. In that sense he knows me better than any person alive. In the perverse way that logic works in my world, it seems appropriate that he’s the closest thing I have to a parent; after all, he’s fathered so many of me.

Cyril feels for Jacob Furst the way I feel for him. Which is why the only time he’s ever asked me for help was when it was on Furst’s behalf. It wasn’t a complicated situation, just undignified; an elderly man and his wife threatened by a crooked landlord and his troop of Neanderthal thugs.

That was four years ago and it was the only time I spent with Jacob and Miriam Furst. But we formed a bond. A bond that feels as strong today as it did then. It’s no exaggeration to say this: without Furst, there would have been no Cyril Bradfield for me, and without some of his documents, I’d probably be dead. But the reason I’m going to Paris is that I liked Furst. If I think of Cyril as a surrogate father it’s easy to think of Jacob and Miriam as surrogate grandparents. With some people, you don’t need time to make the connection; it just happens. Often, when you least expect it.

Twelve-fifty, boulevard de Sébastopol in Sentier. Stephanie dropped euro coins into the driver’s palm and climbed out of the taxi. Despite the hard rain, she wanted to walk the last bit. She entered rue Saint Denis from rue Réaumur and it was how she remembered it; clothes shops and garment wholesalers along either pavement, the road itself a narrow artery clogged by double-parked vans, their back doors open, rolls of fabric stacked for delivery. And noise everywhere; bleating horns, music, the rain, half a dozen shouted languages. At the intersection with rue du Caire a dozen Indian and Bangladeshi porters were loitering with trolleys, waiting to be summoned. In the doorways and alleys were the whores; oblivious to the weather, the wrong side of forty, sagging breasts and bloody make-up done no favours by the dismal daylight.

Stephanie entered Passage du Caire, an arcade of cramped passages with filthy glass overhead, and came to the place where the Fursts’ family business had once been. Part of the sign still hung above the door, the red plastic letters faded to dirty pink. The window was crammed with mannequins; beige females with no heads or arms. A piece of paper pasted to the glass offered fifty percent discounts for bulk orders.

Four doors down was La Béatrice, the kosher café where Cyril Bradfield had introduced Stephanie to Jacob Furst. Seven tables with magnolia Formica tops, a selection of snacks laid out behind a glass counter, fluorescent tubes taped to sagging ceiling panels, one of them hanging loose. On the wall beside the espresso machine was a large wooden framed photograph of George Clooney next to a smaller frame containing a certificate bearing the words ‘Shin Beth de Paris’.

There were half a dozen people in the place. Mostly from the arcade, she guessed; none of them were wet. Stephanie recognized Béatrice, a haughty-looking woman with dyed black hair. She ordered a cappuccino and took it to a vacant table by the small circular staircase leading to the upper floor. Béatrice fiddled with the portable radio on the counter until Liane Foly was singing ‘Doucement’. In the café’s wet warmth, Stephanie caught a whiff of cinnamon.

One o’clock came and went. So did Béatrice’s customers. Stephanie noticed a man who seemed vaguely familiar; slim, tall, well dressed, in his fifties with the same dark blonde hair she’d had as Krista Jaspersen. He was sitting at a table near the staircase. She couldn’t pin a name to the face but wondered whether she might have seen him on TV.

At one-fifteen her mobile rang.

‘Petra?’

‘Jacob?’

‘Where are you?’

The high-pitched voice sounded more tremulous than usual.

‘I’m where you should be. Unless my memory’s going.’

He didn’t reply straight away and she regretted her sarcasm.

‘I apologize, Petra.’

‘Where are you? I don’t have long, Jacob.’

‘Fifteen minutes, okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘You’ll stay?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good. Two minutes, then …’

He finished the call and Stephanie sat there for a moment trying to remember something she’d forgotten. Something she’d intended to ask him. Something that had come back to her on the train.

The phone. The number. How had Furst got Marianne’s number? And now that she thought about that, there was something else. Fifteen minutes? Or two?

She found she was reaching into her coat pocket for loose change; as usual, Petra was ahead of Stephanie, her instinct taking over. There were no coins left. The last of them had gone to the taxi driver. She put a ten-euro note beneath the saucer and stood up.

Out in the passage she looked both ways. Nothing. She decided to wait for his call somewhere nearby. When he arrived and discovered that she’d left, he’d phone again. She was certain of it.

She turned back towards the rue Saint Denis entrance.

And was airborne.

The shockwave was the sound somehow. A flash. Light, heat, no air in her lungs. She was aloft in a hurricane of debris. Then gravity reclaimed her and she was smeared across … what, exactly?

Darkness followed. Unconsciousness? Or just darkness?

The screams began. Cutting through the hum in her head. When she opened her eyes she couldn’t see. A cloud of dust enveloped her, as impenetrable as highland mist. She didn’t know if she was injured because she was numb. But she was aware of wetness down her back. And dirt in her mouth. There was a smell too; something cloying. Burning plastic, perhaps?

Her foot was trapped, wedged between two solid shapes.

She closed her eyes. Time to sleep.

No.

Petra twisted her body so that she could see her right foot. A grey filing cabinet was on top of it, two of its three drawers blown out. Beneath it was half a beige mannequin. She used her left foot against the filing cabinet, creating a gap for the right, then rolled off her mattress of fractured dummies.

Water droplets splashed on her face. A burst pipe. Or rain. She looked up but saw only smoke and dust.

The right ankle was tender. She hauled herself to her feet. Nausea rose up inside her. One step, then another. For now, that was enough. Adrenaline, her most faithful servant, would see her through.

In the remains of the passage fires sprouted in the gloom, deep orange and gold. A severed cable spat white hot sparks over a soggy roll of material with a floral print. Except it wasn’t a roll. It was a body in a dress. Petra made out an arm, filthy black, the hand crushed to pulp.

The passage had a lawn of broken glass. Not just from store windows but from the canopy overhead; metres and metres of it reduced to splinters.

La Béatrice was burning rubble. How many people had been inside? Half a dozen? Maybe. The upper floor had collapsed into the café. She didn’t know whether there had been anyone up there. Scorched body parts hung from the fractured iron staircase. At the foot of the stairs, Béatrice’s head and upper torso were on fire. Petra couldn’t see the rest of the corpse but could smell her burning hair. Closer to the entrance, a single boot and shin protruded from beneath a concrete slab. Less than a metre away, blood was oozing through cracked brick.

There was music. Weak, muffled, rising up from beneath the debris; Béatrice’s portable radio, still working, no matter how improbably. Petra looked to her right. Rue Saint Denis had gone, concealed by the cloak of smoke.

She began to cough, lining her nostrils and mouth with dust. Stunned, all her training suspended, she staggered away, each step as uncertain as the one before. A few metres on, a pretty blonde woman in a lilac cardigan and brown tweed skirt lay on the ground, twitching, flayed by glass.

Under the screams she heard distant shouts; people making their way towards the carnage. Boots scrambled over loose brick, muttered curses followed falls.

To her left, a large fire was taking hold, glass cracking in the heat. She came to a fork in the passage. Over the ringing in her head an orchestra of alarms grew louder. She veered right, then stopped.

‘… to be careful, okay?’

A snatch of conversation coming her way. Then another voice: ‘Check everywhere.’

‘… watch overhead for collapsing …’

Shapes were forming in the murk.

‘… somewhere in here … keep looking …’

‘… extremely dangerous … and armed …’

Two figures, certainly, perhaps three.

‘… take any chances …’

Petra coughed again, spitting out brown saliva.

The first figure emerged from the dust, a light grey raincoat billowing around him. The next was in uniform. An armed police officer with a full moustache. Other silhouettes took shape behind them.

The first man saw her, halted abruptly, then pointed directly at her. ‘Shit! It’s her! There she is!’

There who is?

Who was he looking at? Why was he pointing at her?

A third figure was forming, another armed officer in uniform, then a fourth man in a tan leather coat.

‘Shoot her.’

A mistake, clearly. Except Petra knew that it wasn’t.

The first armed officer looked unsure.

‘It’s her,’ barked the man in the grey raincoat. ‘I tell you, it’s her!’

‘I don’t see the …’

‘She’s armed! Now shoot her!’

The man in the leather coat was already raising his right hand. The second officer was pushing past the first. And Petra was moving, taking the passage directly ahead, already aware of the fact that it was too straight. In a matter of seconds, before she could melt into the smoke, they would have a clear view of her back.

Behind her now, the same voice again. ‘Henri! Watch out! She’s coming your way! She’s got a gun …’

What gun?

Movement grew in the dimness ahead. Petra entered the smoking remains of a boutique; retro-punk T-shirts, studded leather mini-skirts, frayed tartan hot-pants, a severed hand with a silver thumb-ring. She dragged a sloping chunk of partition wall from across the doorway at the back.

‘Shit – Didi, you asshole! I nearly shot you! Where is she?’

More coughing. ‘I don’t know. Maybe you passed her …’

‘In there!’ cried a third voice. ‘Look!’

There was a single shot as Petra plunged into more darkness. She felt the thud of a bullet hitting a panel of MDF to her left. She came to a shoulder-wide passage with stairs to her right. Up to the first floor, a cramped storage area, the ceiling less than a foot taller than she was. The blast had blown the glass from the internal window overlooking the passage. She could hear them arguing below.

No weapon. No way out.

Except for the window. She approached the hole cautiously. Just above her was a web of iron struts, pipes and rubber cable, all of it ancient. Through the dust-haze she watched the four men beneath her. They were looking into the blackened shell of the boutique, shouting at those who’d followed her inside.

No choice, so no need to think about it. Up on to the sill and out on to the ledge, the remaining fragments of glass in the window-frame nibbling the palms of her right hand. There was a rusting water-pipe above her head. She gave it a quick tug; it seemed secure. She held on to it and swung, her toes catching the corner of a sturdy junction box, one of six bolted to a panel, cables spewing from them like black spaghetti.

‘Up there!’ bellowed a man below. ‘Quick!’

But not quick enough. She was already over the ledge above, propelling her body through a mesh of twisted metal ribs. On the roof, she gauged the way the passages worked, the ridges, the intersections. Most of the glass had gone. To her left, thick black smoke was curling skywards, the flames beneath undeterred by the rain.

It was slippery underfoot, years of grime given gloss by the downpour. She tried to work out where rue Saint Denis was so that she could head in the opposite direction. It wasn’t obvious from the backs of the surrounding buildings but there was a gap so she headed for that. The roof tapered to a short stretch of crumbling wall that abutted a taller building; apartments from the first floor up, a business at street level, the shutters pulled down over the windows.

She took the drainpipe to the first floor, swiping three potted plants from a window-ledge, then lowered herself on to the roof of a white Renault Mégane that was parked on the pavement.

Now she was in a small triangular square: rue Saint Spire, rue Alexandrie, rue Sainte Foy. She took Sainte Foy.

Five-past-two, the sirens now a long way behind her. She was still walking, the rain still falling. And helping. Under the circumstances, better to be drenched than dirty. Which was all the logic she could handle.

Head for Gare du Nord. Use the return ticket. Go home, have a shower, catch the plane. Worry about it over a cocktail on the beach.

She was sorely tempted yet knew she couldn’t. Stations were out. So was home. Which meant Marianne Bernard’s integrity was suspended. And it was Marianne’s name on the air ticket.

How had the police got there so quickly? How had they identified her so quickly? And the order to shoot – because she was armed – what did that mean?

One part of her wanted to stop and think. To collate. But another part of her wouldn’t let her. She had to keep moving. That was the priority.

Never stop. The moment you do …

Three-thirty-five. The cinema provided a temporary sanctuary of darkness. The film was a Hollywood romantic comedy, predictably short on romance, utterly devoid of comedy. Stephanie waited until the main feature had started before going to the washroom. She peeled off her denim jacket and the black polo-neck. Both were soaked. The long-sleeved strawberry T-shirt beneath was stuck to her skin. She filled a basin with warm soapy water, rolled up the sleeves to the elbow, scrubbed her face, hands and arms, rinsed, refilled the basin with clean warm water and dipped her head into it, before trying to claw some order through her hair.

A little cleaner but still dripping, she locked herself into one of the stalls, hanging the jersey and jacket on the door-peg. She lifted the T-shirt, examined her torso and ran her fingertips over as much of her back as she could. Nothing but a few cuts and grazes. She pulled down the toilet lid, sat on it, pulled off a dark grey Merrell shoe and checked the right ankle; swollen, tender to the touch, but no significant damage. When she envisaged Béatrice it seemed little short of a miracle. And all because of Petra; Stephanie would have stayed at the table for Jacob Furst.

She pulled on her wet clothes and checked her possessions; the return portion of her train ticket, Marianne’s credit-cards, a Belgian driving licence, flat keys, six hundred and seventeen euros in cash, mobile phone, cinema ticket.

Stephanie returned to the comforting dark of the auditorium, taking a seat near the back, and was grateful for the stuffy warmth. First things first, a plan of action. The primary urge was to run. And she would run. As she had in the past. That was the easy part. Nobody ran as effortlessly as Petra. But she couldn’t allow fear to be the fuel. Before that, however, there were questions.

She rose into the ethnic melting-pot of Belleville. The pavement along the eastern flank of the broad boulevard de Belleville was busy. Stephanie weaved through Afghans, Turks, Iranians, Georgians, Chinese. A group of five tall Sudanese were arguing on the corner of rue Ramponeau. A Vietnamese woman barged past her dragging a bulging laundry bag. Traffic was stationary in both directions, frustrated drivers leaning on their horns.

Stephanie switched on her mobile. No messages and no missed calls since she’d turned it off twenty minutes after clearing Passage du Caire. She return-dialled Jacob Furst’s number. No answer. She switched the phone off again and walked up rue Lémon to rue Dénoyez. The five-storey building was on the other side of the road. At street level, the Boucherie Shalom was closed. The restaurant next to it was open but Stephanie couldn’t see any diners through the window.

The Fursts’ apartment was on the third floor. No lights on, the curtains open. There were weeds sprouting from the plaster close to a fracture in the drainpipe. There was no building to the right. It had been demolished, the waste ground screened from the street by a barricade of blue and green corrugated iron.

She ventured left, away from the building, heading up the cobbled street past graffiti and peeling bill posters, past the entrance to the seedy Hotel Dénoyez – rooms by the hour – until she came to rue Belleville. Then she made a circle and approached rue Dénoyez from the other end at rue Ramponeau.

The Furst family had a Parisian lineage stretching back two centuries. In that time, there had been two constants: a family business centred on the garment industry and active participation within the Jewish community. Which included living among that community. And here was the proof. On rue Ramponeau, Stephanie stood with her back to La Maison du Taleth, a shop selling Jewish religious artefacts. Restaurants and sandwich shops all displayed with prominence the Star of David.

She returned to boulevard de Belleville. From the France Télécom phonebooth by the Métro exit she rang the police. An incident to report, some kind of break-in, she told them. She’d heard noises – screams for help, breaking glass, a loud bang – and now nothing. Please hurry – they’re an old couple. Vulnerable …

When they’d asked for her name, she put down the phone.

She watched from the bright blue entrance to Hotel Dénoyez. When the patrol car pulled up a pair of officers emerged and she noticed two things. First, they looked casual; from the way they moved she guessed they were expecting an exaggerated domestic disturbance. Or a hoax. The second thing was the dark blue BMW 5-series halfway between her and the patrol car.

It had been there as long as she’d been loitering by the hotel entrance. She’d assumed there was no one in it. But when the patrol car pulled up, the BMW’s engine coughed, ejecting a squirt of oily smoke from the exhaust. She peered more carefully through the back window and now saw that there were two people inside. The car didn’t move until the police officers had entered the building. Then it pulled away from the kerb, tyres squeaking on the cobbles, turning right at rue Ramponeau.

She continued to wait. A third-floor light came on. Stephanie pictured Miriam Furst in the kitchen at the rear of the flat. Making coffee for the policemen, taking mugs from the wooden rack above the sink. That was how she remembered it. Beside the rack, a cheap watercolour of place des Vosges hung next to a cork noticeboard with family photographs pinned to it: three children, all girls, and nine grandchildren, none of whom had been inclined to steer the Furst textile business into its third century.

Fifteen minutes after the arrival of the first police car, a second arrived. Followed within forty-five seconds by an ambulance, then a third police car and, finally, a second ambulance. Three policemen began to cordon off the street.

Now it was no longer just Stephanie’s fingers that were going numb.

We pull into Tuileries, in the direction of La Défense. I’ll probably change at Franklin D. Roosevelt and head for Mairie de Montreuil, then change again after a dozen stations or so. It’s five-to-eleven and I’ve been riding the Métro for more than two hours. There’s no better way to make yourself invisible for a short while than to ride public transport in a major city late at night. Later, they’ll see me on CCTV recordings, drifting back and forth. But by then I’ll be somewhere else. And someone else.

Above ground, in the bars and restaurants, in private homes, there is only one topic of discussion tonight. The bomb blast in Sentier. Many dead, many wounded, many theories. There’ll be grief and outrage on the news, and plenty of inaccurate in-depth analysis from the experts.

I know that Jacob and Miriam Furst are dead. Nobody will read about them tomorrow. They will have died largely as they lived; unnoticed. I also know that I should be dead too.

The men who chased me through the smoking wreckage in Passage du Caire were there to make sure. They were there so quickly. And they weren’t looking for anyone else; they recognized me.

I try to fix a version of events in my head. Furst is held against his will until he’s made the call to establish that I’m in place. He’s surprised that I’m there. Did he think I wouldn’t come? He tells me he’ll be with me in fifteen minutes, then two. Why the difference? To arouse my suspicion? To warn me?

How did he get the number? And why wasn’t I more vigilant? Perhaps, mentally, I was already halfway to Mauritius.

After our conversation is over, the explosion occurs within a minute. But the more I consider it, the more perplexing it becomes. They – whoever ‘they’ are – needed to be sure that I’d be in Paris today. That I’d be in La Béatrice at one o’clock. How could they be confident that I’d make the trip from Brussels? And if I’m to assume that they knew I was in Brussels, which as a matter of security I must, shouldn’t I also assume that they know I’m Marianne Bernard? And if they know that, where does the line of enquiry stop? Whether they knew about Marianne Bernard or not, it’s obvious who they really wanted. Petra Reuter. She’s the one with the reputation.

So why the elaborate deceit? Nobody who knew anything about her would risk that. They’d take her down the moment they found her. At home, for instance, in a run-down apartment in Brussels. They’d catch her with her guard down. Simpler, safer, better.

There can be only one answer: they needed me to be at La Béatrice.

Day Three

The Marais, quarter-past-five in the morning, the streetlamps reflected in puddles not quite frozen. Rue des Rosiers was almost empty; one or two on the way home, one or two on the way to work, hands in pockets, chins tucked into scarves.

It had been after midnight when she abandoned the Métro. Since then, she’d stopped only once, when the rain had returned just before three. She’d found an all-night café not far from where she was now; candlelight and neon over concrete walls, leather booths in dark corners, Ute Lemper playing softly over the sound system.

Stephanie stretched a cup of black coffee over an hour before anyone approached her. A tall, angular woman with deathly pale skin and dark red shoulder-length hair, wearing a purple silk shirt beneath a black leather overcoat. She smiled through a slash of magenta lipstick and sat down opposite Stephanie.