Paris Noir - Aurelien Masson [86]
“Seven years.” And finally, me. I was there too. At least physically, because otherwise I felt unconcerned. I was experiencing all this remotely, with the feeling of not being fully there in the stale back rooms of the famous 36, Quaides Orfèvres, headquarters of the Paris Robbery and Homicide Division, trying to unscramble what had happened that night.
“In London?” Sydneymotioned with his chin to Yves, signaling him to be prepared, while I answered him with a silent nod. “Monsieur Henrion … Valère, right?”
Another nod. Valère Henrion. A strangely familiar name. Mine. In the mouth of a stranger, a police officer to boot. Realitycheck.I looked at my shackled hands. The gravity of my situation suddenly struck me, and I nearly choked. This was not a friendly interview. These guys were treating me like a suspect. I swallowed. “Don’t I have the right to a counsel?” Pitiful.
Sydneyflipped through my passport. “You sure do a lot of traveling.”
It wasn’t a question, and his voice had lost all of its weary warmth. He pointed his nose at me. “The lawyer comes later, first we talk between us. This loft, Place de la Bastille, the place where we found you, who owns …?” He didn’t finish his sentence.
“It belongs to a friend, Marc Dustang. He let me borrow it for a few days.
“Very nice of him. Doubt if he’ll do it again soon.” Smile.
For a moment I flashed on Marc’s room and its light walls splattered with red.
“And where is this Marc Dustang?”
“In New York for two weeks.”
“For?”
“Business, I guess.”
“And you, you’ve come to Paris for what?”
I sighed, feeling tension mounting inside of me, annoyed at the idea of what was about to follow. I wanted only one thing: to shut myself up in the dark and get my ideas straight. “To work. I just came back from Fashion Week in Milan and I cover the one in Paris right after. September through October is a pretty busy season for me. All the fashion capitals are buzzing, I work a lot.”
“You’re what …? Oh yes, sound … designer?” Sydneywaited, looking at my nervous right leg, which was jumping uncontrollably.
Again I conceded. “That’s right. I create the sound tapes for the runway shows. Sometimes I do set mixes for designers’ private parties.”
“And the money’s good?”
“Not bad, yes.”
“That’s how you met Mademoiselle Ilona …” he consulted his notes, “Vladimirova? She was also part of that crowd, right? And not just that one.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Come on, Monsieur Henrion, you want me to believe that you didn’t know how your girlfriend made her living? Even weknow it. I see here”—he pointed to his PC monitor with his index finger—“that she’s already met some of our colleagues a few times.”
“She was not my girlfriend, and no, I didn’t know it.” I was having difficulty talking about her in the past tense. “We didn’t know each other …”
At my back, Ralphsnickered.
“Really.”
Sydneygave me a condescending smile. “The two of you were kind of intimate for people who didn’t really know each other. Unless you paid to screw her, which would mean that you knew perfectly well who you were dealing with. What am I supposed to think?”
I looked for words to answer him but only managed to spit out the banal truth. “Listen, I met this young woman last night for the first time in my life. I’d heard about her, but I’d never seen her before.”
“Ah, and who told you about her?”
“Her best friend, one of my exes.”
“Her name?”
“Yelena Vodianova.”
“You’ve got a thing for Russian babes, Valère.” Ralphinvited himself into the discussion. “Model too, I suppose?”
I nodded without turning around or rising to the taunt.
“Where does she live?” Sydneytook things in hand again.
“Yelena? In Milan. She’s married with a kid. She still works the catwalk and sometimes we meet in the fashion show season. I told her