Read Online Paris Noir: Capital Crime Fiction by Dominique Sylvain, Michael Moorcock, Jerome Charyn, Jason Starr, Cara Black, John Williams, Barry Gifford, John Harvey, Scott Phillips, Stella Duffy, Maxim Jakubowski, Jean-Hugues Oppel, Dominique Manotti, Sparkle Hayter, Jake Lamar, Jim Nisbet, Romain Slocombe - Free Book Online Page B

looted goods from Jewish deportees’ apartments.
    They stood in the now deepening twilight in front of a crowded café. On the boulevard’s pavement around them Indian men clustered in conversation, an African woman in a bright yellow headdress pushed a stroller. The new immigrants of the tenth arrondissement, but in their day it had been Russians, Poles and Lithuanians.
    ‘There’s people everywhere,’ she said.
    ‘We have to check, Mina,’ he said.
    ‘And if we find something, what would we do?’ She pulled his arm. ‘Let’s leave, Lucien. We’ll deny everything.’
    But he hit the numbers on the digicode and the door buzzed open.
    ‘Ah, Monsieur Lucien, long time no see,’ said a young woman with a baby on her hip standing at the concierge’s door. ‘Maman’s shopping,
desolé.’
    Startled, he stepped back then recovered.
    ‘Ça va,
Delphine,’ he said, greeting her with kisses on both cheeks. ‘Just getting things from storage. Don’t worry, I remember the way, we’ll see ourselves out.’
    ‘Careful on the stairs, one of the lights went out,’ she said, nodding to Mina. ‘They’re steep.’
    She meant for old people like you. Mina thought.
    ‘Merci’
    He led the way past the wirecage elevator. In the back. Mina saw the rear cobbled courtyard with green garbage containers by planter boxes of delphiniums and pots of geraniums.
    Lucien opened the cellar door, leaned on his cane, took one step down.
    Mina stopped. ‘But this is ridiculous! My back’s gone. I won’t go down there again. I can’t.’
    ‘You came this far, Mina! Don’t make it so difficult.’
    Lucien clutched his cane, staring at her.
    ‘This feels wrong,’ Mina said.
    ‘It’s simple,’ said Lucien. ‘It was always the plan. We made a pact.’ He switched on the cellar light.
    ‘A pact… what do you mean?’ asked Mina.
    Lucien ignored her. ‘Ready?’
    She stood, not budging. ‘What pact?’
    He leaned forward, lowered his voice. ‘Years ago our group made a pact never to reveal what a happened. Or to let anyone find the body.’
    ’But everyone’s gone except us.’
    ‘That’s why I must keep my word.’
    She’d never heard about this pact… what did it mean? Dread filled her but before she could ask more he’d gone ahead. She clutched the railing as Lucien proceeded down the narrow stone stairs. Dampness and the smell of mildew and rotting wood assailed her nostrils. And it took her back to that time so long ago but still vivid today.
    Sixteen years old, her hands browned with shoe polish and sore from stitching leather uppers on wooden-sole shoes – doing the piece work her parents took in to survive and put food on the table. She walked in public always anxious an official would demand her papers and discover she’d folded her jacket lapel over her yellow star.
    Lucien shone the flashlight over the arched stone walls branching into tunnels under the building. Flaking stucco powdered the beaten earth floor. Electrical wires and tools were set to the side. Lining the walls were caged storage areas for each apartment, holding plastic bins, children’s bikes, chairs behind the wooden enclosures.
    ‘It didn’t look like this before,’ Lucien said in alarm. ‘That’s all new.’
    ‘When did you last come here?’ Mina asked.
    ‘Years ago,’ he said. ‘It’s Maman’s old storage. I rent it. They never ask questions.’ Lucien shuffled ahead. A bare electric bulb cast stark light over their faces.
    ‘Number 38, that’s it.’ Lucien reached under the enclosure, rooted in the dirt, pulled out a key and unlocked the padlock. He opened the door of a warped wooden shed to a musty smell.
    Mina saw the cobwebbed foot-pedal sewing machine in the corner. ‘You kept that, Lucien… here?’
    His father had been a skilled tailor. ‘Eh. I had no room in my place. When I came back from the camp, that’s all that was left.’ He shrugged but Mina caught the wistful look on his face. Lucien’s family had