Authors: Pierre Lemaitre
This is where I brought that big lunk Dušan Ravic one night last January, while we were preparing the Heist of the Century. When we got to the building, he smiled with those thick red lips of his.
“When I find chick, I take her here.”
A “chick” . . . Jesus. No-one has used that word in decades, you’d have to be a Serb.
“A chick,” I said. “What chick?”
As I asked the question, I looked around. It didn’t take much imagination to work out the kind of girl you could bring back here, where you’d find her and what you could do with her. Ravic is a class act.
“Not
one
chick,” Ravic said. He liked to sound like a player. He liked to give details. The actual story was much simpler: this moron bunked down on a flea-ridden mattress in this hovel so he could fuck whatever skanky whores he could afford.
His sex life has obviously taken a nose-dive lately, because Ravic hasn’t been here in an age – I should know, I’ve hidden out here often enough – and I’m sure he wouldn’t come back for choice. Chick or no chick, no-one comes here for fun, they come here when they have nowhere else to run. And right now, if I’m lucky and if the cops do their job properly, he’ll have to come here.
With the police shaking down the whole Serbian community, Ravic will quickly realise that this shithole is the only place where no-one will come looking for him.
I’ve unscrewed the silencer and slipped the Walther P99 into the glove compartment, there’s just enough time to pop into a café for a drink, but I need to be back here in half an hour, because if Ravic does show up, I want to be the one to welcome him.
It’s the least I can do.
*
There is a big guy in an interrogation room at the commissariat. According to his papers, he is originally from Bujanovac; Louis checks, it’s a small town in southern Serbia. Dušan Ravic, his brother, his sister? The cops don’t care, any scrap of information is welcome. The big guy doesn’t understand the question, someone smacks him across the face. Dušan Ravic? This time he understands, he shakes his head, he doesn’t know anyone by that name, the cop smacks him across the head. “Let it go,” Camille says, “he doesn’t know anything.” Fifteen minutes later, back on the street, three Serbs, two of them sisters. It’s heartbreaking: they’re barely seventeen, they have no papers, they turn tricks at Porte de la Chapelle – without a condom for twice the price – they’re all skin and bone. Dušan Ravic? They shake their heads. It doesn’t matter, Camille tells them, he will hold them for as long as the law allows; the girls purse their lips, they know the beating their pimp doles out will be proportional to the length of time they are in custody, he can’t afford to lose money, the city never sleeps, they should be out walking the streets, the girls start to tremble. Dušan Ravic? They shake their heads again and stare towards the waiting police car. Standing behind them, Camille gives one of the officers a nod: Let them go.
In police stations across the capital there are raised voices in the corridors, those who speak a little French threaten to call the consulate, the embassy, as if that is likely to help them. They can call the Pope himself, maybe he’s a Serb.
Louis, his phone still pressed to his ear, gives instructions, keeps Verhœven up to date, coordinates the teams. There are flashing dots on his mental map of the city, especially in the north and the north-east. Louis consolidates, updates, dispatches. Camille climbs back into his car. No sign of Ravic. Not yet.
Are all the women scrawny? No, not really. In the condemned building somewhere in the 11th arrondissement the woman is seriously overweight, thirty-something, at least eight kids bawling in the background, her husband is a stick insect in a string vest, he has a moustache – all the men have moustaches – and though not particularly tall, he stares down at Camille. He goes over to a dresser to get their papers, the family are from Prokuplje; on the other end of the telephone, Louis says it is a town in central Serbia. Dušan Ravic? The man says nothing, he racks his brain, no, honestly: they cart him off, the kids start tugging at his sleeves, tragedy is their stock in trade, an hour from now they’ll be out begging somewhere between Saint-Martin church and the rue Blavière carrying a misspelled cardboard sign scrawled in marker pen.
Where information is concerned, the card players at Luka’s are as good a source as it gets. They spend their days chewing the fat while their wives slave away, their older daughters are on the game and the others are minding the babies. Seeing Camille show up with three officers, they wearily toss their cards down onto the table – this is the fourth time in a month the police have interrupted their game, but this time, they’ve got the dwarf with them. Wrapped up in his coat, hat pulled down over his forehead, Camille looks each of them in the eye, the brute determination in his gaze drilling into their retinas, as though the search is somehow personal. Ravic? Sure, they know him, but only vaguely, they look at each other – “You seen him around?” “No, you?” They give apologetic smiles, they’d like to be able to help, but . . . “Yeah, right,” Camille says, and takes the youngest of them aside, a gangling figure so tall it looks like Camille chose him deliberately, which he did since it means he has only to stretch out his hand to grab the guy by the balls. He looks away as the guy falls to his knees, howling up in pain. Ravic? If he is not saying anything now, it’s because he doesn’t know anything. “Or because his balls have stopped working,” says one of the other officers. The others laugh. Camille, stone-faced, stalks out of the café. “Bring them all in!”
An hour later, bent double, the officers race down a flight of steps into a cellar as wide as an aircraft hangar with a ceiling barely five feet high. Eighty-four sewing machines in serried ranks, eighty-four illegals. It must be thirty degrees down there, they are working stripped to the waist, not one of them older than twenty. Cardboard boxes are stuffed with polo shirts branded Lacoste, the owner tries to explain, but is cut short. Dušan Ravic? This particular instance of local craftsmanship is tolerated, the police turn a blind eye because the owner regularly feeds them information; this time he screws up his eyes, racks his brain – hang on a minute, hang on a minute – someone suggests they call in Commandant Verhœven.
Before Camille arrives, the officers tip out the contents of the boxes, seize the few identity papers they can find and call Louis, spelling out surnames while the workers hug the walls as though trying to disappear into the stone. Twenty minutes later, the heat in the cellar has become intolerable and the officers have hauled everyone outside; lined up in the street, the illegals look either resigned or petrified.
Camille shows up a few minutes later. He is the only one who does not need to crouch to go down the steps. The owner is from Zrenjanin in northern Serbia not far from Ravic’s village, Elemir. Ravic? “Never heard of him,” the man says. “You sure?” Camille insists.
You can tell this is eating him up inside.
*
4.15 p.m.
I wasn’t away very long, too worried I might miss my old friend’s arrival. I’ve spent more than my fair share of time on stakeouts, so I’m not about to make the mistake of sparking up a cigarette or cracking a window to let some air into the car, but if Ravic is planning to show his face, he’d better get a move on, because I’m dead on my feet here.
The cops are moving heaven and earth to track him down, so he’s bound to turn up any moment.
Speak of the devil and who do I see rounding the corner? If it isn’t my old friend Dušan, I’d know him anywhere, no neck, built like a brick shithouse, feet turned out like a clown.
I’m parked about thirty metres from the doorway, about fifty from the corner where he just appeared. I get a good look at him as he shambles towards me, stopping slightly. I don’t know whether he’s got a chick back at the henhouse, but Ravic isn’t looking too good.
Not exactly cock of the walk.
From the clothes (a shabby duffel coat at least ten years old), and the worn-out shoes, it’s obvious he’s flat broke.
And that’s a bad sign.
Because, by rights, given his share of the haul last January, he should be dressed to kill. When he’s got some cash, Ravic’s the kind of guy who buys shiny suits, Hawaiian shirts and crocodile shoes. Seeing him dressed like a tramp is worrying.
On the run with a murder charge and four armed robberies on his back, he’s been reduced to living by his wits. And if he’s been holed up here, he must be on his uppers.
In all probability, he was double-crossed. Just like me. Probably should have seen it coming, but it’s pretty demoralising. Just have to suck it up.
Ravic shoves open the plywood door and nearly takes it off its hinges. He was never subtle, in fact you might say he’s reckless.
It’s because he has a short fuse that we’re in this mess, if he hadn’t put a couple of 9mm slugs into that jeweller in January . . .
I slink out of the car and get to the door a few seconds behind him, I can hear his lumbering footsteps somewhere to my right. There’s no bulb in the hall, so the only patches of light come from the open doors off the corridor. I tiptoe up the stairs after him, first floor, second, third, Jesus the stink in this place, stale piss, hamburgers, weed. I hear him knocking and I wait on the landing below. I suspected there would probably be other people here, which might make the job a little difficult, depending on how many of them there are.
Above me, I hear a door open and close, I creep upstairs, there is a lock, but it’s an old model, easily picked. I carefully press my ear against the wood, I hear Ravic’s hoarse croak – too many cigarettes. It’s a strange feeling, hearing his voice again. It took a lot of effort to track him down, to flush him out.
Ravic doesn’t sound happy. There’s a lot of crashing and banging coming from the apartment. Eventually, I make out a woman’s voice, young, soft-spoken, crying, though not very loudly, whimpering more like. I keep listening. Ravic’s voice again. I want to be sure there are only two of them, so I stand there for several minutes listening to my heart pounding. O.K., I’m pretty sure there’s just two of them. I pull on my cap, carefully tuck my hair under it, slip on a pair of rubber gloves, take out the Walther, rack the slide, shift the gun to my left hand while I pick the lock and shift it back as soon as I hear the last pin click and push the door open. I see the two of them, they have their backs to me, bent over something or other. Sensing someone behind them, they straighten up and turn; the girl is about twenty-five, dark-haired, ugly.
And dead. Because I put a bullet between her eyes, watch them grow wide in surprise as though someone has just offered to pay three times her usual fee, as if she’s just seen Santa Claus show up in his underpants.
Ravic immediately reaches for his pocket, I put a bullet in his left ankle, he leaps into the air, hops from one foot to the other like he’s on hot bricks, then crumples to the floor with a howl.
Now that we’ve dealt with the pleasantries, we can get down to more serious discussions.
The apartment is just one room, albeit a very large one, with a kitchenette, a bathroom, but everything about it is dilapidated and the place is filthy.
“Not much of a cleaner, that girl of yours.”
At a glance I spotted the coffee table strewn with syringes, spoons, and tinfoil . . . I hope Ravic didn’t squander all his cash on smack.
When the 9mm slug hit her, the girl collapsed onto a grubby mattress laid on the floor. The veins in her bony arms are riddled with track marks. I had only to lift her legs and she was laid out on her bier. The jumble of clothes and blankets beneath her was like a patchwork, it looked very original. Her eyes were still open, but her earlier shocked expression is more serene now, she seems to have come to terms with her fate.
Ravic, on the other hand, is still wailing. He is hunkered on the ground, balanced on one buttock, one leg stretched out, reaching towards the shattered ankle pissing blood, babbling “Oh fuck, oh fuck . . .” Nobody gives a shit about noise round here, you can hear T.V.s blaring, couples fighting and probably guys playing the drums at 3 a.m. when they’re off their faces . . . But even so, I need my Serbian friend to concentrate, if only so we can talk in peace.
I pistol whip-him with the Walther, one smack straight to the face just to focus his attention on the conversation; he calms down a little, he’s still hugging his leg, but he stops yowling and whimpers softly between clenched teeth. It’s progress, I suppose, but I’m not sure I can count on him to stay quiet, he’s not discreet by nature. I pick a T-shirt off the floor, roll it into a ball and stuff it into his mouth. And to make sure I get some peace, I tie one hand behind his back. With his other hand, he’s still trying to staunch his bleeding ankle, but his arm is too short, he bends his leg under him, contorts himself, writhing in pain. Though you wouldn’t think it to look at it, the ankle is a very sensitive part of the body, it’s full of tiny, fragile bones – simply twisting your ankle on a step can leave you hobbling in pain, but when reduced by a 9mm slug to a bloody pulp of muscle and shattered bone and connected only by a few tendons, it is sheer agony. And seriously incapacitating. In fact, as I put a second bullet into the splintered remains of his ankle, I can tell he is not faking it, he really is in excruciating agony.
“Well, it’s probably best that ‘chick’ of yours is dead, you wouldn’t want her seeing you in this state.”
Maybe it wasn’t true love, but whatever the reason, Ravic doesn’t seem bothered about the fate of the girl. He seems to care only about himself. The air in the place is unbreathable, what with the stench of blood and the smell of gunpowder, so I go over and crack open a window. I hope he got a good deal on the rent, the only view is a blank wall.
I come back and crouch over him, the guy is sweating buckets, he can’t sit still, he’s twisting and turning, clutching his leg with his free hand. His head is bleeding. Despite the gag in his mouth, he manages to drool. I grab him by the hair, it’s the only way of getting his attention.