suite, the police had arrived downstairs. She’d seen plain-clothed detectives at the front desk just seconds after stepping out of the lift. Yet seconds before, on the fourth floor, she’d exchanged a cordial bonsoir with the woman from Housekeeping.
Newman said, ‘No wonder I couldn’t guess what you do.’
‘I didn’t kill them.’
‘This guy Golitsyn – when you thought I was someone else, you thought I worked for him.’
‘When I got to the room, they were already dead.’
She couldn’t believe how guilty she sounded.
Newman stared at the Smith & Wesson. ‘That right?’
‘It hasn’t been fired. It’s not mine. I picked it off the floor.’
‘What are you saying – it was a suicide pact?’
She changed channels, choosing CNN’s coverage of the Sentier bomb. There was footage of the wreckage in Passage du Caire, a reprise of the casualty statistics and still no mention of Anders Brand.
In the CNN studio two experts sat beside Becky Anderson. One was a spokesman for Le Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF), the other was a terrorism expert from the London School of Economics. The CRIF spokesman insisted the bomb was part of a growing campaign of anti-Semitic activity in France and went on to castigate the government and – by implication – the public for their lack of outrage.
The LSE analyst focused on the likely provenance of the two fake suspects. Snippets of information were threaded through the theory to lend it credibility; prescient rumours in recent days from sources at Le Blanc-Mesnil, a small town on the northern fringe of Paris with a largely immigrant population, formerly of Sephardic Jews from the north-African colonies, more recently of Muslims, many from the same countries.
The premise sounded convincing; racial hatred boiling over in an area known for it. Le Blanc-Mesnil fell under the scope of District 93, also known as the Red belt from an era when it was controlled by staunchly Communist mayors. Immigrants had always been a pressing problem. The man from the LSE managed deftly to link ill-feeling in Le Blanc-Mesnil to Jewish commercial interests in Sentier. Stephanie was almost persuaded by him until he mentioned the suspects again.
She turned off the television.
Two incidents in one city on consecutive days. Superficially independent of one another but linked by a third incident: the murder of Jacob and Miriam Furst. Not in itself significant enough to make the news – an old couple murdered in their home – but vital to Stephanie because she was the single factor common to all three.
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