The Forgotten Dead: A dark, twisted, unputdownable thriller

But all I found was emptiness. And the faint scent of lavender soap.

The door closed behind me with a muted click. Eight days and eight nights had passed. All traces had been carefully cleaned away.

I threw open the window. A damp gust of wind against my face. Beyond the rooftops rose the dome of the Panthéon. In front of me the university buildings were spread over several blocks.

It was here that Patrick had stood when he had called, in this very spot. I remembered his voice on the phone. I miss you so much … I’m headed straight into the darkness …

The wind was fluttering the curtains, which billowed up and then sank back to the floor. I turned around and took in all the details. The big bed, the open-work white coverlet with a floral pattern. On the wall, a framed poster of a sidewalk café. The telephone on the nightstand. That was the phone I’d heard ringing in the background. Someone had called to tell Patrick that something was on fire. But tell me what’s going on, in God’s name!

The room was exactly four metres wide and five metres long. After all my years as a set designer, I automatically took measurements. Four times five metres, twenty square metres. Those were the physical dimensions of loss.

In the corner of the far wall stood a small desk. That’s where he had sat to write, bending low over his computer. Patrick always sat that way, as if he wanted to smell the keyboard, breathe in the words. In reality he needed glasses, but he was too vain to get them.

In the bathroom I met my own face in the mirror. Pale, with blue shadows under my eyes. My skin creased with fatigue. I rinsed my face with ice-cold water. Splashed water under my arms, and rubbed my skin hard with a towel.

Then I got clean clothes out of my suitcase. I was going to turn over every single stone in this city if that’s what it took.

The price of a slave. That’s what it said at the top of one page. Followed by numbers, amounts that appeared to be sample calculations:

$90 - $1,000 (= $38,000 = 4,000 for the price of one.)

Mark up = 800% profit = 5%

30 million – 12 million / 400 = 30,000 per year. Total?

The last calculation had been crossed out. Next to it were also a few words scrawled across the page, underlined and circled:

Small investment – lifelong investment

The boats!

I kept paging through Patrick’s notebook, which was filled with these truncated and basically incomprehensible scribblings. I was sitting upstairs in a Starbucks café, determined not to leave the table until I’d figured out at least some of these notes.

The café was three blocks from the hotel, on a wide boulevard lined with leafy trees, and newsstands that belonged in an old movie. Everything reinforced by a feeling of unreality. Jetlag was making me hover somewhere above myself.

The simplest thing, of course, would have been to go straight to the police and report him missing. But Patrick didn’t trust the police. He would hate me if they came barging into his story. First I needed at least to find out what he was working on.

I ate the last bite of my chicken wrap and crumpled up the plastic. Then turned to look at his last note. That was how I usually approached a new play, by starting at the end — Where is it all heading? How does it end?

Patrick had jotted down a phone number. That was the very last thing he had written.

Above the number was a name: Josef K.

This is the endpoint, the turning point, I thought. After this he’d chosen to check out of the hotel, and he’d put this notebook in an envelope and sent it to me.

Keep this at the theatre.

I turned the page to the previous note. It was scrawled across the page, as if he’d been in a hurry: M aux puces, Clignancourt, Jean-Henri Fabre, the last stall — bags! Ask for Luc.

I spread the map open on the table. Looked up the words in the index of my guidebook. Bingo! My heart skipped a beat. It was like solving a puzzle, and suddenly the answer appears.

I felt like I was on his trail.

Porte de Clignancourt was way up in the north, where the Paris city limits ended and the suburbs began. It was the end station for the number 4 Métro line. It was also the location of the world’s biggest flea market, Marché aux Puces. Rue Jean-Henri Fabre was one of the streets in the market. Then I read the next line in the guidebook and my mood sank. The market was open only Saturday to Monday. Today was Wednesday.

Out of the window I could look straight into the crowns of the trees. The leaves had started to fade, turning a pale yellow. At least it was easier working here than at the hotel. Patrick’s absence wasn’t screaming at me in the same way.

I continued paging through the notebook, studying what he’d written. There were a lot of names, addresses, and phone numbers, but no explanation as to who the people might be. I marked the addresses, one after the other, on the map, and slowly a pattern emerged, an aerial view of Patrick’s movements around the city.

When I looked up again, rain had begun to streak the windowpane, and people down on the street were opening their umbrellas. It was close to three in the afternoon, morning in New York. I massaged the back of my neck, which felt stiff and tight after spending the night in an aeroplane seat.

I got out my cell and started with the number on the very last page of the notebook. Later, when the rain stopped, I would go to see the places marked on the map. Force my body into this upside-down day and night, not wanting to waste any time.

The call went through. I glanced at the name: Josef K. Two ringtones. Three. A girl was wiping off the nearby table. A couple of tourists were talking loudly in Italian.

Then I heard a click on the phone, but no voice answered. The line was simply open, and I could hear the sound of traffic, a siren far away.

‘Hello?’ I said quietly. ‘Is there someone there named Josef? Hello?’

I was positive I could hear someone breathing.

‘I’m actually looking for Patrick Cornwall, and I wonder if you could help me. I’m in Paris, and I think he called this number and—’

The traffic noise stopped. Whoever it was had ended the call.

With a tight grip on my cell, I moved on to the next number on the list.

After four attempts to speak to someone, I gave up. The most extensive answer I’d heard was ‘no English’ and ‘no, no, no’.

I was seized with longing to call Benji instead. To hear how the opening night had gone. And whether Duncan had won the acclaim he’d wanted. But all of that seemed so distant, as if it had ceased to exist the moment I boarded the plane.

Benji was the only one who knew that I’d gone to Paris. I’d told him at lunch, when we were sitting on the steps of the loading dock on 19th Street, eating burritos with jalapeños from the deli across the street.

‘You’re out of your mind. I can’t handle everything on my own,’ said Benji, missing his mouth. A big dollop of meat fell onto his lap, along with some melted cheese and a limp slice of tomato. ‘What if something happens? What do I do then?’ He tried to rub the spot off his baggy designer jeans.

‘Nothing’s going to happen,’ I said. ‘The stage set is all done, and they’re going to dance this same performance for three weeks. I’ll be back long before then.’ I stuffed my half-eaten burrito into the empty juice container and stood up.

‘If anyone asks,’ I said, ‘just say that something has come up in my family, and I’m terribly sorry, et cetera. That’s all anyone needs to know.’

An hour before the curtain-up, I left the theatre. By then all the paperwork was in order: the account books and the certificate from the fire department inspection, the list of props that had to be returned — all in neat folders. Like a final accounting of that part of my life.

‘Kiss Patrick when you see him,’ said Benji, giving me a hug. I pulled away and didn’t reply, just waved as I ran out to the cab that would take me to Newark and the Air India flight to Paris, leaving at 21.05.

The pill was supposed to be taken no later than an hour before departure, but I’d sat with the blister pack of pills in my hand until the gate was ready for boarding. There was no way I was going to allow myself to be carried through the air in a closed tube without some sedative inside my body. I’d suffered from claustrophobia as long as I could remember, and it wasn’t just rooms with the door closed, basement apartments, and elevators. Sitting captive in an aeroplane or a subway was even worse. It was impossible to escape. There was no way out. I was at the mercy of other people, with no power over my own fate. That was probably why I became a set designer. In the theatre I built my own rooms and decided where the exits would be. Usually I was able to deal with my claustrophobia. I always checked to see where the emergency exit was when I entered a building, and I never rode the subway. If I needed to travel any distance, I hired a car. Going back to Europe had never been part of my plans.

I read the warning label over and over. If pregnant, consult your doctor, it said. And ‘there is a risk the foetus may be affected’. Forgive me, I thought as I swallowed the pill. Forgive me, but I have to do this.

The cab crept along the glittery Champs-Élysées and turned off right before the Arc de Triomphe. That’s where all the hustle and bustle ended. Rue Lamennais was lined with businesses, and most of the employees seemed to have gone home for the day. I asked the cab driver to pull over before we reached number 15, which was one of the addresses in Patrick’s notebook.

I stopped twenty metres away, ducking into the shadow of a doorway. A car slowly passed and slid to a halt in front of the entrance. Then another equally shiny vehicle arrived. The first was a Bentley, the second a Rolls Royce. Three men wearing dark suits came out of the building carrying briefcases. A doorman hurried forward to open the car doors, bowing and anticipating every step the men took in an obsequious dance. There was even a red carpet on the pavement. The cars started up and disappeared.

This was the second address I’d gone to see. The first had turned out to be an American bookshop. Typical Patrick. He loved to ferret out old editions of classic novels that cost a tenth of the price in paperback. I’d roamed around inside among millions of dusty books, up and down narrow stairways, past benches with cushions and blankets squeezed in between the aisles. When I sat down to take a brief rest, two hikers with backpacks came over to ask me if I was an author. ‘We’re authors too,’ said the boy. ‘But we publish our writing on the Internet. We think of ourselves as akin to the beat generation, but in a whole different context, of course.’

It was now six thirty, and dusk was hovering like a blue note in the air. Yet another shiny car glided past, this one a Jaguar. At that moment my cell rang in my shoulder bag. The doorman glanced in my direction. I looked at the display. Unknown caller.

‘Ally,’ I said.

‘You called?’ said a woman with a French accent. ‘You’re looking for Patrick Cornwall?’

Adrenaline coursed through my body. My knees felt weak.

‘Do you know where he is?’ I said. ‘I need to get hold of him.’

A brief pause on the line. No background noise.

‘We can’t talk on the phone,’ said the woman. ‘Where are you right now?’

‘On a street called rue Lamennais,’ I said. ‘Outside a restaurant.’ I quickly moved closer so I could read the gold script on the visor of the doorman’s cap.

‘Taillevent,’ I said.

‘In the eighth?’ said the woman.

‘Excuse me?’ I asked, thinking instantly of the baby. The eighth sounded like a month at the end of the pregnancy. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The eighth arrondissement,’ she said. ‘In half an hour. How will I recognize you?’

‘I’m wearing a red jacket,’ I said, and then she clicked off. I lowered my hand holding the cell and smiled at the doorman.

He smiled back.

‘Good news?’ he asked.

‘I think so,’ I said, and put my phone away in my bag, going over the conversation in my mind. Thinking about the tone of the woman’s voice. Formal but not hostile. I strained to remember the fruitless phone calls I’d made earlier in the afternoon, but they all merged into one. It didn’t matter. I’d soon find out.

I smiled at the doorman again.

‘Is it possible to get a table for dinner?’ I asked.

The doorman surveyed my clothes: jeans and the red anorak I’d found in the Salvation Army shop on 8th Avenue.

‘I’m sorry but we’re fully booked this evening.’

He moved away to open the door of the next car that had pulled in, and I took the opportunity to slip into the restaurant behind him.

Thick carpets muffled all sound inside. The entire foyer was done in beige and brown. It looked like the decor hadn’t undergone any changes in the past fifty years. A staircase with an elaborate, gilded wrought-iron banister led up to the next floor. The maître d’ blocked my way.

‘Excuse me, I don’t speak French,’ I said, ‘but I’d like to ask you about a customer. I think he was here a little over a week ago, and—’

‘We do not give out information about our customers,’ said the man. ‘They rely on our discretion.’

‘Of course. I understand that,’ I said, smiling at him as I swiftly searched for a suitable lie, a role to play. I knew that Patrick would never go to a place like this merely to have dinner. He must have been meeting someone here, someone he was going to interview.

‘This is so embarrassing,’ I said, making my voice sultry and feminine. ‘I represent a big American company in Paris, and one of our business partners has booked a table here, and I’ve had so much going on, my mother died recently, and now I’m afraid that I’ve mixed up the days and the weeks.’

The maître d’ frowned and glanced around nervously. Two men in grey suits stood near the cloakroom, leaning close as they talked. A petite, energetic woman with a pageboy hairstyle briskly took their overcoats and hung them up.

‘So if you wouldn’t mind just checking to see which day he booked a table …’ I put my hand on the maître d’s arm. ‘I’ll be fired, you see, if I lose this contract.’

He wavered, casting a glance at a lectern made of polished hardwood on which a book lay open. The reservations calendar.

‘What did you say your name was?’ The maître d’ again glanced off to the side and then hesitantly went over to the lectern.

‘Cornwall,’ I said. ‘It’s booked under the name of Cornwall. Patrick Cornwall. He’s my business partner.’

‘No, I’m afraid not. I don’t see …’ The man ran his index finger over past lunches and dinners.

‘Oh, good Lord,’ I said. ‘I guess it couldn’t have been last week.’ I clapped my hand over my mouth. ‘In that case, I really need to come up with a good excuse and contact him …’

The maître d’ kept paging through the book, and then his finger stopped abruptly.

‘A Mr Cornwall made a lunch reservation on the previous Thursday, September 11, but it was for only one person.’ He glanced up hastily and then closed the book.

What the hell was Patrick doing all alone in a luxury restaurant? I thought. Squandering our money? My hand moved involuntarily to my stomach.

‘One moment please,’ said the maître d’, and he went into the next room. I took a few steps in that direction. He stopped to speak to an older man wearing a red jacket.

‘This lady is asking about Monsieur Cornwall. Patrick Cornwall,’ he said in a low voice. ‘But then I noticed …’ The maître d’ glanced over at me. I fixed my gaze on the wall.

‘Cornwall? You mean that journalist? The American?’

The older man lowered his voice. ‘He is no longer welcome here.’

‘I know. But what do I tell the lady?’

And then they both headed towards me, with the older man in the lead.

In the few seconds before they reached me, I thought to myself that it couldn’t be possible. The men had spoken in French. I shouldn’t have been able to understand them, but the language from my childhood had resurfaced like a repressed memory. ‘I’m afraid we’re closed now, madame,’ said the older man in English.

‘What happened when Patrick Cornwall was here?’ I asked.

‘Under no circumstances do we give out any information about our customers.’

The maître d’ put his hand on my back and discreetly ushered me to the door.

‘It’s best if you leave now.’

And the doorman closed the door behind me without saying a word. The street was almost completely dark.

What on earth could Patrick have done to be refused admittance to such a place? Did he talk too loud?

I moved a short distance away from the restaurant, pulled up the hood of my jacket, and leaned against the stone wall.

Well, I’ll soon find out something, I thought. If only she shows up. That woman on the phone.

I glanced at my watch. Ten more minutes.

While I waited, I tried to conjure up some words in French. Shoe, foot, stone, street. I couldn’t do it, even though the language clearly existed somewhere in my subconscious. Those years spent in a French village were not anything I wanted to remember. I was six when we arrived there. My mother became a different person. I had faint memories of a house that echoed with silence. A man who demanded I call him Monsieur. Doors that were locked at night. Loneliness. And fear when I woke up at night and didn’t know where my mother was.

The car pulled over before I saw it. If I hadn’t been so lost in my own thoughts I might have noticed there was something wrong, that it wasn’t a Bentley or a Rolls, but a worn-out Peugeot with rust on the wheel rims. Suddenly a man was standing in front of me. He wore a hoodie and that’s all I saw. Adrenaline shot through my body, all my instincts screaming at me to flee.

‘Get in the car,’ he snarled, speaking English with an accent. He grabbed my arm. I pulled away, but he blocked my path.

‘I’m waiting for someone. They’ll be here any minute,’ I said. The street was deserted. Not a single Jaguar as far as the eye could see. Even the doorman had abandoned me. I was getting ready to kick the man in a sensitive spot and then take off running when I noticed someone sitting in the car behind him. It was dark, but I was almost certain I saw a woman in the driver’s seat. She wore a headscarf. With my heart pounding, I went over to the car. The man followed close behind.

‘Are you the one who called me?’ I said, leaning forward. The back car door was open.

‘Get in,’ she said, motioning to the back seat. I complied. The man crowded in next to me and slammed the door shut. A second later the woman started up the car and drove off. Fear surged like a hot wave through my body.

‘Where are we going?’ I said. ‘Who are you?’

‘Why are you asking about Patrick Cornwall?’ said the woman. ‘What do you know about Josef K?’

‘Nothing. I don’t know anything about Josef K. That’s why I called.’

I saw her looking at me in the rear-view mirror. Brown eyes with heavy eyeliner. The rest of her face was hidden by the scarf.

‘Where is Patrick?’ I said. ‘Do you know where he’s staying? Is that where we’re going?’

She turned onto yet another dark back street, again changing direction.

‘First I want to know who gave you my number.’ She had a deep voice with a melodic lilt to it. Aside from her accent, she spoke fluent English. ‘Who’s been talking about Josef K? Who do you work for?’

‘Who do you work for?’

The woman made a sharp turn and braked. We were on the outskirts of a park. Not a soul in sight. I was starting to feel truly scared.

She turned halfway around.

‘Was it Alain Thery who sent you?’

‘Alain who?’ I said, confused.

My instincts told me to lie. Then I’d have the upper hand, even though there were two of them.

‘I work for the same magazine as Patrick,’ I said. ‘The editor hasn’t been able to get hold of him. He was supposed to turn in a story, and the deadline is coming up. They go nuts if we don’t stick to the deadline.’

‘Let me see your press credentials,’ said the woman.

‘I’m not a journalist,’ I told her. ‘I work in the office.’

‘What’s your name?’

I don’t know where it came from, whether it was fear that cast me back to the person I used to be, or whether it was a rational decision not to tell them who I was. A lie, and yet not a lie. As close to the truth as possible.

‘My name is Alena Sarkanova,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘What’s your name?’

But the woman didn’t return the courtesy. She lit a cigarette. The smell of cheap tobacco stirred up hazy memories from my childhood. At that instant my cell rang, chirruping merrily in my bag, like an old acquaintance. I leaned down and fished it out.

‘Don’t answer,’ said the woman. The man grabbed my wrist. I managed to see Benji’s name on the display before I switched it off. It hurt to cut him off like that. Sweet little Benji, who right now was the only link to my normal life.

‘You need to stop poking around,’ said the woman. ‘Do you hear me? You need to go back home to New York.’ She met my eye in the rear-view mirror again. I swallowed hard. I hadn’t said anything about coming from New York. So she must know where Patrick lived and worked.

‘Where is he?’ I asked.

‘Go home,’ said the woman, and then she motioned to the man. He leaned across me to open the car door on my side, signalling that the conversation was over.

‘And don’t tell a fucking soul about any of this.’

The man gave me a shove and I climbed out. I drew the evening air deep into my lungs, feeling vaguely euphoric at being outside again. The car door slammed shut, and with a lurch they were gone.

I walked quickly away, heading in the direction where the city lights were brightest.

‘Good evening,’ said the desk clerk as I entered the hotel. He gave me a welcoming look through his rectangular designer glasses. There had been a shift change since I had left around lunchtime, an eternity ago.

‘Is it possible to get something to drink at this time of the evening?’ I said, running my hand through my hair. I had a feeling that I looked awful. ‘Nothing alcoholic, but anything else. Water.’

‘Of course,’ said the clerk, quickly getting to his feet. He came around the counter and disappeared up a small staircase to the dining room.

‘I’d be grateful for something to eat too,’ I called after him, and then sank down onto a sagging armchair. I’d walked at least three miles before I found a taxi. I hadn’t eaten a thing since lunch at Starbucks, and my stomach was churning with hunger. Or maybe it was the baby. My legs still felt shaky after the episode inside the car.

Facts, I told myself. That’s all that matters. The essentials.

The people in the car: a woman and a man. Age: somewhere between thirty and fifty. Definitely French.

The woman was the one in charge. Her English was grammatically correct. Well-educated. Her phone number was the last thing in Patrick’s notebook. She’d had a dual agenda: to find out who I was and what I knew, plus make sure that I left Paris.

I rubbed my forehead. Jetlag was still clamped like a helmet around my head. No matter how many times I replayed the conversation in my mind, I didn’t feel any wiser.

‘Pardon me for asking, but aren’t you Patrick Cornwall’s wife?’

The desk clerk placed a small tray in front of me. Salami and cheese. Water, and a glass of juice. It looked heavenly.

‘You don’t happen to have another one of these, do you?’ I said, my mouth full of bread roll.

I quickly drank all the juice. Then leaned my head back against the soft upholstery of the armchair.

Going home was not an option. I could always contact the police and the American embassy, get them to look for Patrick. Wait for him to get in touch.