Chapter 60

Paris.

What may I say of Paris?

That the French never take no for an answer.

Wars, riots and rebellions, governments formed and overthrown, regular as winter flu; crushing poverty and great wealth. Through all of this Paris has stayed Paris, crown of France, city of boulevards, chic and red wine.

In romantic movies Paris is the Seine and sentimental understandings beneath the burgundy awnings of the local café, where waiters in crisp white aprons serve tiny croissants on silver plates and whisper philosophical truths about love.

In American thrillers Paris is corruption, its grimy Metro hiding beady-eyed strangers chewing unknown herbs in the corners of their mouths, who spit on the track and snigger at young women and chase each other down the cobbles of Montmartre.

To children Paris is the double-decker train and the Eiffel Tower; to wealthy adults it’s the sound of champagne popping on the top-floor restaurant beside Notre-Dame. To nationalists it’s the tricolour flying by the Arc de Triomphe, and to historians it’s the same, though perhaps the historians look upon the red, white and blue with a little more circumspection.

To me Paris is a beautiful place to spend May, June and September, hideous in August, drab in February and at its most magical when the drains are opened to wash away yesterday’s dirt, turning the city streets into a roaring fountain.

To Aquarius Paris was the last known location of the entity known as Janus.

I ditched Salome at the arrivals lounge of Charles de Gaulle airport and walked to the taxi rank in the security guard who’d been about to search me. There I caught a taxi driver by the arm, but was so repulsed by the stench of booze on my breath and the migraine pounding against the side of my skull that I went instead to my neighbour driver and slipped into him, easing cautiously out of the taxi rank with my hire sign off.

Roadworks on the Autoroute du Nord left me fuming, fingers drumming while the radio played bad Europop. When the traffic report kicked in, overriding the singer’s expression of the notion that his lover was his light, his breath, his joy, his food, his buttered toast, it declared that the tailback ran all the way to the Périphérique, and with a hiss of frustration I pulled off the autoroute and went looking for a station.

At Drancy I caught the RER and a young woman with dyed blonde hair and, alone in the scratched corner of my carriage, rifled through my purse in search of who I was. I was Monique Darriet, and I was carrying fifty euros in notes and coins, a door key to location unknown, a tube of lipstick, a mobile phone, two condoms and an insulin kit. Pulling up my sleeve, a bracelet revealed me to be diabetic and asked that you dial for emergency assistance immediately.

I shuffled into an old man with a pencil moustache at Stade de France. He wasn’t as handsome nor indeed as comfortable as Monique, but I wasn’t in the mood to manage my blood sugars.

Only fools and the desperate stay near Gare du Nord or Gare de l’Est. Like nearly all major stations in every major city on the planet, all they’re good for are thin coffee, overpriced cigarettes and the fumes of taxis waiting in ranks. Noise, bustle and a sense that nobody cares define the drab station concourses where money cannot buy a decent sandwich, and I made sure to be at least fifteen minutes’ walk from them before I looked for a hotel.

Down a street too narrow for the height of houses that fronted it I found a thick black door with a bell pull that weighed as much as my old thin arms. The proprietor seemed surprised to have a guest, but I shook his hairy hand nonetheless and slammed the gate in the bemused face of my former host.

Inside, a windowless hall was lit by bare tungsten bulbs, the filaments wound like strands of DNA. The air smelt of warm breath and wood varnish. I trotted round to the back of the reception desk and assigned myself a suite on the top floor, marked it as paid for, tucked the key in a plant pot on the landing of the stairs, grabbed my coat and went to find a hearty meal and a missing ghost.

My body didn’t need the food, but routine dies hard, and the mental compulsion to eat outweighed physical desire. As stew steamed before me and coffee cooled by my side, I watched the street and thought about Janus.

Three weeks ago she’d been photographed by Aquarius: a Japanese woman sitting in this very same café, newspaper on the table in front of her. She’d looked distracted, her eyes wandering off somewhere to the left of the lens, but then Janus probably had plenty to think about.

“Excuse me,” I said to the waiter, pushing a very generous tip on to the tray, “I’m looking for a friend of mine. Osako Kuyeshi. Comes to this café sometimes. Have you seen her at all?”

Paris isn’t as diverse as London or New York. A lone Japanese lady sipping coffee by herself had been noticed. As, indeed, had her absence.

I found her in outpatients at Georges-Pompidou, waiting for a CT scan. Slipping into a woman in hospital robes and thick support socks, I sat down by her and said, “Are you waiting for the scanner?”

She was.

“What’s it for, can I ask?”

“I get cysts,” she explained. “And I lost my memory.”

“That’s terrible for you. I’ve been waiting months,” I grumbled, rolling my tongue against the false teeth glued to my gums. “I have terrible problems with my memory. One day I’m standing talking to this stranger on the train, next thing it’s two months later and I’m down to my knickers in someone else’s bedroom.”

No! exclaimed Osako Kuyeshi. Not you too?

Yes! Shocking, it was, just shocking, I mean, they weren’t even my knickers…

… but enough about me. Tell me about you.

Forty minutes later I walked out of the hospital, a junior doctor with a stethoscope round my neck.

Three days ago Osako Kuyeshi had opened her eyes and not known where she was. Five months of her life had vanished. She barely even spoke French; the last thing she remembered she was in Tokyo, waiting to collect her benefits. The doctors were baffled, so were the nice men who came to ask her questions about it as she sat waiting for the psychiatrist.

“It’s all right,” I’d said. “I’m sure something good will come of this.”

I don’t think so, she’d replied. My husband died last month, and now I’m alone. I don’t think anything good will come ever again.

Osako had woken in an apartment not her own.

That was interesting.

If Janus had left Osako as an emergency move, she would have done so in a crowded street, a place hot with bodies to jump to.

An apartment sounded more planned, less alarmed.

I went to Sèvres-Lecourbe, south of the monument to military ambition that was Invalides, searching out Janus’ new host.

The place turned out to be a holiday apartment, rented in Osako’s name, though she couldn’t remember the purchase. The first face that Osako had seen–young, green eyes and a purple veil–was the house cleaner, a Moroccan woman with flawless French and shoes going through at the toe, who exclaimed that she’d been asked about Madame Osako’s condition already, first by the doctors, then by the men who came knocking on her door, and she had told them what she told me–that she had helped Osako when Madame stumbled.

And after Madame stumbled?

The cleaner wasn’t sure. She remembered a stumble, then she stood in the street and Madame Osako was screaming, just screaming. Poor woman, is she all right?

“You found yourself in the street but cannot say how you got there?”