Devil May Care

the door marked WC. The phone was off the hook.
    ‘Yes.’ His eyes travelled up and down over the printed notice concerning public drunkenness. Répression de I’lvresse Publique. Protection des Mineurs.
    No names were exchanged in the course of the conversation, but Mathis recognized the voice as that of the deputy section head.
    ‘A killing in the banlieue, ’ he said.
    ‘What are the police for?’ said Mathis.
    ‘I know. But there are some … worrying aspects.’
    ‘Are the police there?’
    ‘Yes. They’re concerned. There’s been a spate of these killings.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘You’re going to have to take a look.’
    ‘Now?’
    ‘Yes. I’m sending a car.’
    ‘Tell the driver to come to the St Paul Métro.’
    Oh, well, thought Mathis, as he gathered his damp raincoat and hat from the hook, it could have been worse. The call could have come two hours earlier.
    ∗
    A black Citroën DS21 was waiting on the rue de Rivoli beside the entrance to the station with its engine running. The drivers never switched off because they didn’t want to wait while the hydropneumatic suspension pumped the car up again from cold. Mathis sank into the deeply sprung back seat as the driver engaged the column shift and moved off with an unrepentant squeal of rubber.
    Mathis lit an American cigarette and watched the shop fronts of the big boulevards go by, the Galéries Lafayette, the Monoprix and the other characterless giants that occupied the bland Haussmann thoroughfares. After the Gare du Nord, the driver switched into smaller streets as they climbed through Pigalle. Here were the yellow and scarlet awnings of Indo-Chinese restaurants, the single lights of second-hand furniture shops or the occasional red bulb of an hôtel de passe with a plump and bare-legged poule standing beneath an umbrella on the corner.
    Beyond the canals and criss-cross traffic systems of the old city boundaries, they went through the Porte de Clignan-court and St Denis on to an elevated stretch of road that nosed between the upper floors of the tower blocks. It was here that Paris shunted off those for whom there was no house in the City of Light, only an airless room in the looming cities of dark.
    The driver swung off the Nl down a smaller road and, after two or three minutes’ intricate pathfinding, pulled up alongside the Arc en Ciel.
    ‘Stop,’ said Mathis. ‘Look over there.’
    The Citroën’s directional headlights, turned by the steering, picked out the foot of a stairwell, where a single uniformed policeman stood guard.
    Mathis looked about the desolate estate. Stuck to thewalls at what appeared to be random intervals were ‘artistic’ wooden shapes, like something from a Cubist painting. They had perhaps been meant to give the buildings colour and character, like the rainbow they were named after. Almost all had now been pulled down or defaced, and those that were left made the facades look grotesque, like an old crone with badly rouged lips.
    Mathis walked across and showed the policeman a card. ‘Where’s the body?’
    ‘In the morgue, Monsieur.’
    ‘Do we know who he was?’
    The policeman took out his notebook.
    ‘Yusuf Hashim. Thirty-seven. Métis, pied-noir – I don’t know.’
    ‘Record?’
    ‘No, Monsieur. But that doesn’t mean anything. Not many people here have records – even though most of them are criminals. We seldom come to these places.’
    ‘You mean they’re self-policing.’
    ‘It’s a ghetto.’
    ‘How did he die?’
    ‘He was shot at close range.’
    ‘I’m going to look up there.’
    ‘Very well, Monsieur.’ The policeman lifted the rope used to close off the stairwell.
    Mathis had to hold his breath as he climbed the pungent steps. He went along the walkway, noting the chains and padlocks with which the residents had tried to reinforce their flimsy front doors. From behind one or two came the sounds of radio and television, or of voices raised. In addition to the foul stairway smell there was the occasional whiff of couscous or merguez.
    What a hell this was, thought Mathis, the life of the métis, the half-caste or the pied-noir, the French of Algerian birth. They were like animals, not fenced in but fenced out of the city. It wasn’t his job to set right the inequalities of the world. It was his business to see if this Hashim was anything more than a cheap one-shot killing and, if so, what it might have to do with the Deuxième.
    The head of his section would require a