Paris Noir - Aurelien Masson [88]
“And her bike?”
“Her bike?”
“Yes, you said that she had a helmet, was it just for decoration?”
“No, she had a scooter, but she wanted to go on foot.” Because she’d parked it in front of the bar. And that was when I understood the reason behind this and the paranoia Ilona was showing. She kept looking behind her on the way. I had attributed her behavior to her eccentricity. All the Russian girls I’ve met in my work have been a bit eccentric. In fact, she had obviously wanted to avoid rue Amelot—and the people who were waiting there for her. “We walked for about thirty minutes, around Place de la République, up Faubourg du Temple as far as Saint-Maur, then turned right to get to Oberkampf and the restaurant. Café Charbon, know it?”
Sydneydidn’t react but I felt Yvesnodding on my right and heard him commenting on my lack of judgment, strolling around like that on a Saturday night in such a neighborhood with that kind of girl.
I heard a noise behind me—Ralphwas back in the room: “No answer to the number you gave us, Valère.” His voice was first very close, controlled, then I had the impression that he was straightening up to talk to his boss. “I got our colleagues there. One guy speaks English so I asked him to check a couple of IDs. He’s going to call back.”
“Go on, Monsieur Henrion.”
“We ate, talked a little, there was a crowd. It wasn’t very good.”
“Still didn’t open the present?”
“No.”
“So, this Ilona girl wasn’t as bad as all that.”
“I did it for Yelena, because she was her best friend.” And perhaps a little for myself, I thought.
“Very nice of you.”
Ilona had insisted that we sit in the rear, near a big mirror. She sat down so she could have her back to the restaurant window. In order to see what was behind her without the risk of being recognized from the outside. During the meal, she’d called a number on her cell several times but no one answered. At every aborted call, she’d seemed more tense. As for me, I was learning a little more about her because she was lowering her guard. I was only guessing really, catching signs. I’d already heard other stories like this and had no trouble filling in the blanks.
Like Yelena, she had arrived in Paris around the age of fifteen, leaving behind a crappy life with no future in a ruined, corrupt country. Ready to do anything to have her place in the sun. A pretty kid like so many others. Unscrupulous agencies relying on older former models from the same background who had actually become pimps had dragged her from capital to capital. Never forgetting to pump as much bread as they could out of her. Agencies that didn’t hesitate to put her on lousy jobs once she’d started to age, which meant turning a lot less tricks.
Of course I suspected what Ilona was doing to pay the rent. I had one foot in the scene, and even if I wasn’t into those things myself, I knew them well. I’d cross paths with many girls of her type. For a while I’d thought that Yelena was working as a high-class whore too. She talked so little about her life at the time that in the end I didn’t trust her. She hadn’t understood my attitude, and our affair fell apart. By the time I realized that her discretion was only modesty and shame, she’d already gone elsewhere to work with others and start over. That was six years ago, just after my arrival in London. Since then we’d stayed in touch anyway, and this at least had given me the chance to apologize, to try and be a better friend.
It was probably because of that, because of an old, unresolved guilt, that I had agreed to do something for Ilona at the end of the meal.
“So really, she asked you to go to her place alone, and you said yes without hesitating, without asking for an explanation?”
“Of course I did!”
“And so?”
“I can’t remember what she told me anymore, I … I’m tired.”
“With all the junk you took?” Ralphdidn’t want to be forgotten.
I couldn’t reply. No point trying to justify the coke,I’d taken it willingly, like an idiot. They’d made me swallow the rest by force. But my three